everybody doing all right. This is

exciting. Thank you all so much for coming. It's really honor and privilege to have you all here. And we're gonna do something a little bit different tonight rather than do what is the norm and perhaps what I've done many times before. Just get up and tell you all about this book that you already own. I thought we d'oh bonus round with one of the guests, one of the people who was interviewed for travel mentors. So I'm going Thio welcome him to the stage in just a moment. But I'll read the bio first while I wrestle with the audio and here we go, one of my one of my favorite people in New York City. So I'm excited and we'll be asking questions. I have not asked him before, so this is a rare live edition of Tim Fair Show. In some ways, also, here we go, Tim Urban.

He was Tim Urban Twitter, Facebook at wait, But why wait? But why dot com Timmerman is the author of the Blogger Wait but why? And has become one of the Internet's most popular writers. Tim, according to Fast company, has captured a level of reader engagement that even the new media giants, or that even the new media giants would be envious of today. Wait. But why? Receives more than 1.5 million unique visitors per month, among them Elon Musk and has more than 550,000 email subscribers. Tim has gained a number of prominent readers as well, like author Sam Harris and Susan Cain. Twitter cofounder Evan Williams Ted curator.

Chris Ashington That's my body's Hi Chris Anderson Onda brain Picking some rehab UVA Tim SYRIZA Post After interviewing Elon Musk have been called by boxes. David Roberts quote the meatiest most fascinating, most satisfying posts I've read in ages. End quote. You can start with the 1st 1 Elon Musk. The world's rad ist man. Tim's Ted Talk inside the mind of a master procrastinator has received more than now. I checked it yesterday. 25 million combined views. Please Welcome to the stage the incredible, the brilliance and handsome Tim

Urban. I feel like this is like your birthday party, and I'm like stepping in the middle

of the night. Well, you know, I said, What other Tim can I bring into the fold for those people who are maybe a little older, like I am. This is the T to the improved version Terminator reference. All right, so I figure we'll jump into it. And what we're gonna do is we'll have a conversation which mostly involves me just asking him questions. And then we'll jump into this fish bowl and answer some of your questions. And then after that, we will have the opportunity. We might be here for a while, so I will not be offended. People are like peace. I'm out.

I don't want to wait, but we will have a chance to say hello And people who want to have photographs, and so we'll be able to do that. Okay, let's just jump right into it. All right? Wait. But why? Before we put wind, you're not yet a little bit about this. I guess it feels like a couple of nights ago. But the news yesterday can't remember. It's pimping week. You blind casually for six years or so on the side. Could you tell us about that block? What subjects did you cover? What characterized what you did part time for six years.

So it was called underneath the turban. So that's a little thing that I came up with. And the turban? Yes, because my name is Timur. I was 23 seconds. It was not a serious project. Uh, and it was very much a side project. I, uh it was actually I think I can credited because credit the fact that it was a side project for why I was actually able to kind of be productive because I didn't have this pressure to do it. I was like, What's my voice? Who am I as a writer? I wasn't a writer. I was just doing something else. I was gonna blawg to procrastinate from things I was doing,

which liberated me creatively. Actually, I was able to kind of do my own thing and, you know, kind of find my voice and, you know, kind of ah, little bit courageous. A times, Andi, I think I think so. So for someone like me is actually like it was like, I tricked myself into, uh, actually doing stuff that I normally probably would have been a little bit more belabored and trying to get it going, but, uh,

what type of subjects was it. Was it similar? How was it most different? And how is the most similar to wait? But what?

Yeah, so it was very much more like a block block. You know, I write about my day I rant about, you know, going to, uh, store. And then they had McDonald's there, and then they I was like, Don't get the six piece nugget get before And then I ordered 10 and then they actually have the end of the night. So they give me 18 and then I eat all 18 and that it was like, that kind of like a story about my day, Very much like, just tough my head just typing, publishing. Um,

and it never it was It was, ah, small, little passionate following of, like, 700 people, like six comments on a thing. And that was that. And it was It was this side project. But it was a way for me to actually write, like, 300 block post over a

six year span. What were this? Were there any seeds from that experience that then informed? Wait, but why? And why did you create people line? Yeah. And where's the name

come from? Yeah, so? So I was able to kind of hold my voice to writing 300 block post. I look back at the early ones, I wince it like the tones I was using. So it was, you know, 300 block post will teach you what you like to know. The voice you like to write in and s o that's one thing. And then I also like towards the end. Isis decided one night to try to draw something, and I kind of said, Let me, you know, I was gonna try to depict this concept that that was funny. When someone you know,

it's a doppelganger day on Facebook. If someone posts a doppelganger that's way better looking than they are, I would think that's kind of hilarious on. I was like, I'm gonna draw that thing kind of messy looking at them like a handsome stick figure with, like, a wave of hair. And I said, I did that and it hit me that I was like, I would be better and drawing and I realize I like that. And so I discovered that there, too, when I started. Wait. But why other

people also respond positively to

that. Or did you? Just did? Yeah, you've got great feedback. And then I started Just every post online is like the last seven posts on the block. All had drawings was discovered at the very end. So then it was time to start a new project.

Why was it time to start a project? Why not continue reading about the chicken McNuggets?

Good. It's not I'm not trying to dig up. No, no, it's fair. And I and I also write about chicken

nuggets. I'm sorry. This family programming. Not sure. Sorry.

Uh, no, I, um it was, uh It was time in my life in general. Toe like turn all my attention. Not 1/3 of my attention toe. One creative project was always doing something with my full time. And then I'm doing these two creative projects on the side.

I'm gonna be a pain in the ass. I apologize. But that's my nature. Why was it time? Like what? Realization? Conversation or getting fired or whatever Catalyzed the decision. You know what? It's time for me to put all my eggs in one basket creatively.

It's this thing you do that makes me love your podcast. That's stressful. Being the first just learning. Uh, but, you know, So for me, it was actually I spent years of age of 22 to 31 like hating myself a little bit because I was burning to do something creative, whether it was writing our music or something, and and I always was doing them on the side, you know, it was like that kind of that kind of just leap of faith in my own kind of ability to do something creative full time took me nine years, nine years that that I wasn't very happy. And so I finally said, You know, this is I have to do something full time because I always thought if I could just do something full time at all the energy from all of these things into one thing, it would go,

It would go well. So I decided, You know, um, I I own the business with my friend. And it was the fact that the business got into a decent enough spot that, you know, we were able to start something new and kind of That's what I jumped on. What was the business It's a test prep company. This is a great business. It is low overhead. Simple, like a monkey could run it. It's

good. So Munch, a nanny, is very successful. Novelist also got his beginnings.

It's a good starter, a good like starter business.

It's Adam Robinson as well. So three people in this book that's crazy you're putting

together now who knew who knew I was on like the starter business? I was just procrastinating from my music. Career is actually all I was doing when I started. I was tutoring on the side. Then, of course, you know the other side things and taking all my time, which is what a classic procrastinator would do. But yeah, just simple kind of, you know, you that each session pays for itself. You don't need overhead, you beginning. You don't need any full time employees, so we But we had built it up to the point. We had good full time employees good enough to run running kind of without both of us there.

And so it was time to start something. And we've done this. A couple of years ago, we started a podcast at back in 2011 with theory, That podcast just get bigger. And they did. Unfortunately, we didn't know how to build a good happy built a bad bill, a bad rap, but we But now it was a couple years later, it was time for something new. And I said, I'm gonna jump on this and I need to do something creative. Let me see if I could do it as also a business that, like we can kind of own together. You can run our tutoring company.

I'm gonna go and start something. And, you know, I was between kind of like writing a musical, which is a terrible business. I wouldn't want to drag him into that or writing maybe a content website. That's that, you know, for media platform that that could be a business. So that's why that's why we sent along that I knew those were things I could do creatively Well, And so we settled on this, and the idea premise was like, What if I took instead of five hours a week trying to belong 60 hours a week to write a blonde? What? What will happen? I took the things I knew that I had gotten good at on the other block, which was just kind of writing cloak, really? On dhe a drawing stick figures and started

it from there. What is the origin of the name?

Uh, 16 hours on go, Daddy searching for dot coms. Um, And, man, it is not much. There is. Not much, but I didn't I I wanted it to be something that wouldn't be pigeonholed it. It's too, you know. All right. So, I

mean, were you just typing in random combinations of words, or is there some itch that you had related to the expression and then you have a habit I was imagining? Oh, it's because people would say something to you and you want it. Test the assumptions, or you wouldn't accept it at face value. So go wait. But why? You know, that was in my head

how I explained it. I wish it. I wish it was that I checked 2000 things and go down. 150 came out. Uh, my girlfriend knocked out 140 immediately. Absolutely not. That leaves me with 10. Where I was kind of like, OK, thes air all bad, which is the least bad, which, if the site's good, it can seem kind of cool. Suddenly, maybe, but it starts off bad. But then it's not that. And there's some of the other ones are just extremely embarrassing. So just dangle that

hook in front. I mean, were there any that I could give some examples to if it makes you feel any better book titles that are horrible. But were there any that you really liked that your girlfriend shot?

You're like we could both do this embarrassing, actually, just you also

Okay, I'll kick it off. Eso there was for what? End up being for our work week. There was lifestyle hustling. Glad I didn't use that. They're waas drug dealing for fun and profit, which was promptly vetoed by every retailer. Thank God there was a broadband and white sand. I mean, it goes on so sometimes you need life to save you from yourself.

Good. Those released nonsensical like they have some kind. I understand two of those three.

All right, I'll take two out of three. That's partially I'm giving you, like the better of the worst. But near term

miniature king dot com I wasn't a deep go Daddy's final. You know, you've never been on one of these. It gets weird. It gets really weird. So I'm there and I'm like, like into this idea of a king that picture the playing card king and I'm like a miniature king. And I suddenly got obsessed her that I was like his little legs and he's very angry. He's very cranky, and there's like big adult people walking by him. He's on the ground two feet tall, and my girlfriend was like Jesus. But I got so addicted to the King concept that when I started, But why I meet the logo that saying, You know, I was just thinking how pissed off. That's amazing.

You're like, OK, kind of. Yeah, I still kind of think Manager King could have worked. He's the mascot. Easy. He's cranky anyway, I like it. But since then I've got you know what? You could D'oh! This happened. Do you still in the news? I own miniature king dot com and about like, 15 others. Yes.

Um, yeah. There's a lot of Jesus half bro is gonna do a site where Jesus, half brother and how he's like. But he's not like the divine one. He's just, like, born from, like Jesus, his mom with some guy and what could go wrong with Got all kinds of all kinds of psychological issues going on. It just is like trying to figure out his career. What?

What were if you look back? I looked back and I remember the first my first attempts at blogging and like, the 1st 12 post, and I mean they, thankfully mostly been for gotten over time. But what were your first you had You had more practice night. You'd already put in 300 reps. What were the first posts like to remember any of the topics?

Yeah, well, so well, with my early blogged, I mean, the topics really was like, this started, like, three sentence things like one of the 1st 3 was, you know, the title is frankly and then it said, Like peeing in the shower is wrong. I don't want to be right. That was a block post back in the day. Flash forward six years now. Wait. But I knew more,

and I knew right away it was gonna be like, long and thorough, because that's I just you know it was my own site. I know I could get into death if I if I could just go longer. And so first the beginning. I was anonymous. And I'm sure you dealt with this to at some point you have to get attention phase. So I anonymous. The only platform marketing platform I have is my personal Facebook page, And I started with seven ways to be insufferable on Facebook, which sounds like a buzzfeed headline. But it was, like, much more in depth. Uh, like,

got into the deep, dark psychology of why I, like, you know, like, why it's the wild West of social etiquette. Why we're all, like our very embarrassing version of ourselves on it. What the different, like qualities, negative human qualities to come through on it. So that was the very 1st 1 I actually went to Easter Island for a month before I started way. But why did just alone in the middle of nowhere, right? Blogger posts and picked like my favorite one to put on first to just kind of, like,

figure out what? And that was the winner. Why'd you, Vicky Strong. I like the fact that you could take a 2000 mile yardstick and swing it around the island and not hit any people like that was cool too. May I was just so isolated. Plus like the statues and the whole thing. And I was kind of like, I've always wanted to go. I was there. There was gonna go to Lithuania in the window, just creep out some small village. Yeah, well, well, you could tell me a small village to creep out sometime,

and they were just gonna And I should talk to someone in really? You may actually, like, arise, arise. Suspicion. If you're like this'll foreigner, like working everything, I'm just writing vlog in isolation in a small Lithuanian village. Yeah, it sounds like a George Clooney spy, but I do want Do you want to do that in the mid dead of winter Goto like a small cold village

somewhere. So how did the block post do that one?

It did Well, the very 1st 1 like I chose. Well, how did

you choose it relative to the

other? It isn't tryingto do some combo of like something that I felt was true enough to me that represented like the kind of quality. I wanted to do it all so that we could go by just beginning. How can you go viral? Because, you know what year was this? 2013. Summer of 2013. So that pose did really well. I got 500,000 unique month. That's it? Yeah. My whole last log got 250,000 units in six years, so this was, like, okay, Longer.

Like getting into more serious topics and insulting people like, you know, it's is onto something. Plus, you know, what I didn't know at the time was that 2013 was pretty magical year to be promoting content on Facebook. This was that Facebook decided. Let's show everyone just how powerful we are. And they started made. This is why Buzzfeed exploded that upward. The first part of it in 2013. Viral over. These sites exploded because Facebook's algorithm basic said anyone posting content, we're gonna show it half a 1,000,000 people. I was in the right place at the right time. And so

that was very helpful as well. Yeah, I just, uh Thio maybe underscore one thing. Because, for instance, I started my first business. It was the golden age of Google AdWords. I mean, it was shooting fish in a barrel, so inexpensive and then for our work we launched. It was at the same time at South by Southwest, when Twitter was effectively publicly debuted their big screens, displaying all of the tweets in the world's going on, which happened to be concentrated right now. Austin, Texas.

Because it was so small and I would say that any time is the right time in some way. So these opportunities were talking about. There are these opportunities right now. You just have to try to sniff them out, order she in the dark and hope that you'll catch some tale ment. But everybody has, it seems, with these stories, some element of luck involved. But you can improve the odds.

That's just well, right. There's like 10 waves, you know throughout your time, one of the waves is cresting. When you're starting, you don't know which one, but something is cresting at the time. It's the perfect time to start something, for some reason, always

right, And in every story where you find a component of good timing, there's usually a bad time greatly podcast up like you were paddling for the right way. You're just doing it years too early. Uh, all right. So I want Thio bring another figure, another character into this picture. Who's Winston? Can you tell us about Winston, please?

Winston's a close friend of mine, and I met him in 2005 when he was three months old. Um, I purchased him, and we lived happily together ever since. He was the size of a golf ball. Time now is the size of a football, which is a huge upgrade for him. He's a tortoise, Um, but he's he's very lovable. He's he's kind of my apartment screen saver, like I'm just sitting there in this would be it. Just a empty still seen. And there's this, like moseying things, little moseying dinosaur that Moses by and who doesn't want that you should all own a tortoise. It's weird that most of you don't own a tortoise.

Why did you name in Winston?

Because I thought he had a Churchill looked at. It's more than Churchill has it toward us like him,

sort of imagining the another not the same. But like the sea turtles, Finding Nemo was like Yeah, I can see that.

Maybe yeah, with less charisma, but otherwise,

uh, when I look at some of your posts and I've had my life very directly and profoundly impacted by by somebody writing, particularly about time remaining with same parents or family. But when I look at some of your very research heavy posts and it feels funny to call the Post's whether it's on a I or other topics that confuse a lot of people. And we were talking about for this. You don't have any familiarity in some cases. 50,000 words. 70,000 words. Uh, that's a book, everybody.

How long before our work for

our work week? Uh, that's a solid Now it's deceptive to use page count, but that's how I think it's about. I want to What? 420 pages? 130 pages. And it's not gigantic. Dr Seuss print. So it's probably closer guessing taking a stab to the 220,000 word mark. I seem to have a word. Inflation, with the books right, getting bigger. But when you when you're tackling one of these posts, what are some of the approaches or questions you ask that allow you to write something better and different is presumably. Many people are out there trying to learn about these various topics. And yet you put out these posts that are the size of books that end up going viral and you make complicated or seeming the complicated topics very digestible. So what is your approach to tackling a topic like Aye aye, yeah.

Um, so it's pretty simple for me, for first of all. Like I just just I do this kind of weird thing where I assume that my audience is a picture like a stadium full of meat. So it's narcissistic fantasy, you know. But it's like, you know, it's just I'm just writing for I'm writing the exact post that I would be thrilled to get right. So I'm just trying. That's my focus group right there, right in my head. And it's easy because, like, you know, we're all kind of like, especially the people accept.

Not really. There's like 100,000 copies of each of you out there somewhere. And the truth is like, you know, if I just right for me, there's a lot of people that have my exactly your taste. I just know. So I start there with kind of like who? My writing for that. That makes it easy. And so it was only like a I. If there's 1 to 10 scale of how much you know about something tennis world leading expert on one has absolutely never heard of the term. You know, I started that two or three almost stuff like most laymen on the layman, right about everything, and so that I spend it just out of my curiosity.

Is the driver a pink top of something excited to dig into? And I'll spend, however long it takes. Sometimes it's one day. Sometimes it's three weeks. Sometimes it's three months, but I'll take a long as I need thio toe. Learn enough to get me to maybe like a five or 610. You know, I'm not gonna get a Ph. D. I'm not gonna spend five years getting myself to an eight or nine, but I'm gonna get myself to a six where I'm like I can answer basically, any question of Lehman asks me, I could do a Q and A with an audience on this topic for 10 hours and I'll have a pretty good solid answer to everything. Not that I know,

necessarily the truth of everything. But I know when the experts don't know the truth and they're arguing. I know what the experts say about basically everything. So I get myself to that level and then I think about OK, so exports have sometimes a hard time explaining cause they haven't been into two in decades. Sometimes, and they have this jargon, they don't remember what it's like to be a two out of 10. I was there three weeks ago. I know exactly what my readers know about this, and I know exactly what So I just looked at the road. I went down to get myself to a six, and I think about, you know, how could I do that roadway more efficiently If I could go do it again? How could I do it in a much more fun way,

you know, And what's what's this fun story? I could tell? Bring readers from the to two or six, and so that's my challenge is to basically package the road. I just went down for three weeks and make it an hour and 1/2 package instead. OK,

not surprising. They have followed questions. Uh, let's pick a subject. Have you written about crypto currency or Blockchain? Not yet. Perfect. So highly requested time, right? I'm sure it is. Now the reason I ask is that much like a I? I have seen dozens of people attempt to explain without misrepresenting Cryptocurrency and Blockchain 101 for the masses And it seems like almost every single attempt has failed. If you were to take that assignment on, where would you start?

So I would I don't always start. I feel like I'm blindfolded in a room. I'm just trying to figure out we're even the walls. Where is the furniture? I just want to start to understand what I even need to learn. So I wanna get a picture of the topic and then I can start diving in going on various rabbit holes and usually going outside the topic. A rabbit hole outside the topic is procrastination. But it also often, you know, it gives you more context. You'll find some metaphor out there that you end up bringing back. So I'll just read and read and watch YouTube videos. Uh, all on the Internet. How do you search? So,

um, reading Are we talking? You started Wikipedia's at ground

zero. Yeah. Started Wikipedia for just a basic foundation. We compete is good at telling you where the walls are, just letting even understand the topic in general. And he has a lot of good good dollars on it. So I'll go there. Then I'll go to the bottom Wikipedia and start clicking on with reference links on Do you know usually Google like, you know, Blockchain. Pdf. And yet I'm finding all these superbly boring journal articles on going to a lot of good people smart teachers explaining stuff on YouTube that are gonna explain the whole thing. Usually they're gonna explain one part. Maybe. I realize that to understand block Cheney to first go down three legs need to build a foundation that begins with understanding what encryption is. You don't understand how encryption works in public keys and private keys. That's when you could start on top of that building understanding of what a ledger is that would be on these different computers and how it could possibly be secure.

And by the time you get to Bloggin you're like eight layers up, but, um, so I'll go find a YouTube video not on Blockchain but on encryption. And then I'll find a YouTube video. Explain what ledgers are in general. I'm reading about the history of ledgers where they're used in the world, you know, encryption and where it was, how was invented, how it's a vault. And you just keep doing this and the reason why it's easy for me this part because I'm super curious. So the more the more I learn, the less icky the top against on the topic. It's a Nikki. It gets to start to be super delicious opposite.

And then and then I can't be enough. Then I start. It's so fun suddenly get it. And then I want to fill in the knowledge, and I wanna watch YouTube video already know the answer to Just feel good about had already knew everything you say This is great, but it solidifies you here. Seven different people articulated in seven ways, and you just rounds out your understanding, and by the end, they start to be like, totally

get this finding. I find a video on YouTube. So last I checked which is not recently, uh, you do with the second largest search engine in the world. A lot of great stuff. There's also a lot of nonsense. How do you search? So what are the terms? How do you sort of, um how do you go about picking properly?

Also Google. It's I just I will Google, like, blocks it, Leave that window open a new window on Google. Bitcoin knew it. No. A theory of new window crypto currency. New window like decentralized systems Crypto new window crypt. Crypto currency is bullshit. New window like, you know, whatever. I'll just keep going and I'll just think of anything. And then each one of those windows I go back to and I just hold down command and I just click, click, click,

click, click, click 10 tabs, 10 tabs 10 times. I just go and read everything. So that's you Google, you know, Get me on that. I don't have to discern. I don't care if this gives Motor Oracle is gonna be really useful. You know whether it's gonna be accurate because it's the beginning process is just read 70 articles that may or may not have validity to them, uh, the total sum of them. Actually, you start to understand what what we know is a species where we all agreeing, and then where clearly a lot of people don't know what they're talking about.

Others is broad. You know, there's this kind of dichotomy of view in this one area. Is these people these people? YouTube. It's kind of the same thing. I'll just start watching without discerning. I get it. You're a procrastinator. It's fantastic because you don't feel bad about just watching endlessly when you're taking all of your time and it's not opposed to doing it feels great, so I'll just I'll just watch. And then, of course, the sidebar starts to figure you two very quickly, and Google will very figure out what you're doing. And then you two will start to put all the things on the side for me.

But you start to see name Trust to make money and Cryptocurrency Yeah, well, even just it's funny. I'm just running a post now on life. Look into this political stuff, and normally my side bars like Look how much of an idiot. Trump is his voters, and then I go to the now try and tell, you know, I was going all these conservative things and accept writing about both sides of stuff. And suddenly you the Internet starts to indoctrinate me the other way. And they're like, Look at this. Like, why is Trump voter like, embarrassed this?

Like I look over and kind of like, And a couple hours later, I'm like from the best, Like so like you to figure out your angle and it will start to kind of like feed your stuff. Um, Then there's certainly if you trust your Hank and John Green like I trust them. You know Kurt, Kurt gets hot. I trust them. See GP Gray has trust him so certain you'll see certain names you trust minute physics. Great. So there's also that same with thing with, um, you know Google, of course, like I'll trust

certain sources more than others. And once you've ingested massive amounts of information and you've established a basic map for the territory, what do you think are the tools or approaches anything at all that that help you to be so good at teaching these subjects and in the way that you presented or structure your pieces.

Yeah, well, so get the starting point is I'm like, I just went through this and I teach myself and I was bad at teaching myself. I didn't know what I was doing. So now if I could, the experience of a learner is fresh in my hands, and that's the first thing that's helpful. Um, but then I just I always basically, with almost any explainer post like that, I just zoom out, helicopter up, like, you know, you're you're looking at the land and you see, kind of like a beach.

You don't know what it is. That is, if you flake eyes. This is just a little beach, and then there's a curve around. I don't know. That's how I feel. Like a lot of the articles on a I crypto currency are, they show you a piece of beach, and the author might have a full understanding, but you just look, you're just describing the beach. So you take a helicopter. You okay? Wait a second. This is a big river.

There's you go take a further Oh, no. This is this is kind of a tributary that goes into the ocean. And now you're kind of up where airplanes go and maybe even the international space station goes and you're like, Okay, this is actually what's going on. So I start there myself, is a thinker, and then when I'm trying to explain, I'm just gonna start them. Which is why people make fun of me is like, right about three different things. And they all started the Big Bang to go back to the But like sometimes like, it's helpful to you, just like you, just by the time you get from the Big Bang.

Now, suddenly it's like we're all we can see the whole coastline, and now the beach suddenly makes sense. And then I try to make it fun also because he wants to like it. Sonny, you know, like the journal articles for experts like they're often just don't they're not ready to entertain, you know, they're just it's just bad. It's like textbooks and schoolwork so that they were so boring part of hers. I like YouTube because people who end up with a lot of views on YouTube that are gonna end up on my recommended recommended they haven't I for entertainment, So

I try to do the same thing. And if you were to ask, say, friends of yours who are fans of your writing, what your ingredients for entertaining are, What might they say? Just ask you, I don't I don't want you to be overly self deprecating. I'm trying to figure out what makes entertaining because it is clearly entertaining.

Well, again, Entertaining means 10 different things in 10 different people like, you know, every time I get 90 miles from like, you know, mothers and Kansas angry for swearing. But like, you know, it depends on, you know, it's, you know, it's it's ah, I think, trying to add a sense of humor into basically everything, treating it light,

good metaphors. Not for me. Lots of visuals. I'm a visual learner. I if I see a block of text and I'm just scrolling down kind of upset. It's like feels like homework. If I scroll down and every few paragraphs is in charge of a comic, I'm suddenly like, Okay, this is fun, but I'm kind of excited like, and so that's how I think so I tried to do that. That's what I would want. So I like I like, um you know, like there's so many things where you can just do a funny stick drawing or really good diagram and just just way clearer and sticks in your head more.

You know, if I'm to talk about procrastination, I could talk about like, the limbic system and talk about how it works and it's our fight or flight zone. Or I can make an instant gratification monkey and like, because that is essentially what it is. And that's more memorable and, I think more fun to read

at the time. So you've really, in my opinion, exhibited a mastery for taking what many people would consider extremely intimidating subjects, many of them involved in forging what we're going to experience a species is the future said, like talk about the future for a second. I want to read a quote here. All right, believe that you wrote or said this. Credit me for I always thought the future would be intense, but now I think the future is going fully fucking crazy. Okay, Soon. What are a few things that you're excited about or see? Coming down the pike in the future doesn't have you want to baby sit could

be many. It is gonna be crazy. And here's why. So in the first thought a lot of people have is that it's naive to think that the future is this weird. The end of times, Edward things that you know, you know, you're just another night in person that thinks they live in a special time because and the reason we all have that instinct is because were biology moves very slowly. It involves very, very slowly. So 50,000 years is nothing in biology and evolution. So we barely changed, meaning were still a baby. Born today is a baby that is perfectly optimized toe live in tribe in Ethiopia and 50,000 BC and it is everything about it is ready for survival in that world. But what we've done is taking that baby away from its home planet and brought it to another planet, which is the earth in 2017. And that baby isn't made very well for this world.

None of us are. Okay, so So the first thing to think about is just that a lot of our instincts and a lot of our, you know, intuitions are actually gonna be inherently wrong. We're gonna be living in a delusion that was helpful back then. Today, justice is not great. So the reason the way you can cut through this and actually see reality when your baby that baby is not it's not seeing reality isn't helpful to that baby fitting in with the tribe and bleeding with the tribe. Believes it's today. We want to see reality. And so you could do things like you could just look at the facts sometimes. So imagine that could be a long answer. Imagine that. I have a lot to say. Imagine that.

This is what I'm saying with zoom out, Think interest of can't be short in my head. So imagine that human history is about 1000 sent. Get comfortable phones get settled in, Um, 1000 centuries of human has 300,000 years. Okay, so each two centuries is a page in a book. Okay. How many pages of this? 500 angels actually know. Whatever it is, they're finding older human remains so fine. So 140,000 years. Every page in this book that you're holding is 200 years in human history. Okay,

so page one through 6 50 of that book 100 gatherers. If you're an alien reading this book to understand what happened on this planet, you are for this really boring page 6 50 10,000 years ago. You have the agriculture revolution. Okay, wait. Suddenly people are coming together forming cities. Okay? They're starting to actually form larger civilizations, have a collective intelligence that's starting to form that can compare notes that can kind of create a knowledge tower that, like, is bigger than any one of them. It's very interesting stuff. So that's 50 pages ago. Then it gets boring again for a while. Okay.

Page 6 90 out of 700. Right? Little tiny end of the book here. Jesus, You have 6 93 You have the advent of Islam. The Roman Empire happens to pages ago. It's already done. 6 97 You have imperialism. For the first time. You have countries. This is new thing. That happened in the last three pages. Page 6 98 You have the Enlightenment. You're the Renaissance. Your things like this. They discovered that Galaxies telescope page 6 99 You have you finally get to the beginning of the U s and the beginning of a kind of constitutional democracies.

Right now, pay 700 happens, which is from about 200 years ago today. Okay, so the beginning of paid 700 alien turns the page. Industrial revolution happens. Okay, big deal. Big change. Okay. And has Reeves on the page. Things start to go crazy. You start to have you have 699 pages. This alien has read this boring ass species has communicated through letters and talking. You know, he was excited about language 500 pages ago.

Now he's bored. Smoke signals, firing a cannon ball in the air, Stuff like that. Okay, suddenly, on page 700 we go to the space station and the space station on the moon. We have airplanes. Your card just on page 706 199 pages. Okay. We have only We only communicate through way, have this kind of simple transportation communication. Now way have face time. Okay. We have no way have telephoned me on the Internet. I mean,

crazy, right? Less than a 1,000,000,000 people for the 1st 600 on page 700 lonely across the 1234567 billion first marks. So the aliens reading and like his wife comes in is like, Hey, we're gonna have the most interesting things. That means that what is about to happen to this species This is crazy, Which has happened on this page. This is when we're born. We're born at the end of page 700. Okay, so the way you think the future is gonna be like, I'm like, Oh, Page 701 And they're like, this way There's no way is that shit just goes bonkers.

Yeah. Three sentences. Page seven, No one will take us 2025 when they predict that, like, you know, a I's gonna basically infiltrate every single industry and part of our lives the way electricity did it. Like a 10 year span in the 18 eighties. That's the 1st 3 sentences. So to me, I see revolutions set. Paige first half a page 70 1/4 of a 71. I see revolutions and you know v r A. R c revolutions and a I see revolutions and brain machine interfaces. We're gonna be able to think thoughts to each other. It's way cooler than language.

for the first time. I see revolutions and genetic stuff your grandkids are gonna be like. So you just had a baby and hoped it was a good baby. Let's go crazy. He's so primitive. Um, and you could just go on and on and on with things that look. How about this one? Okay. What are the major leagues for life like you can count on one hand for all of life. Simple cell. Too complex. So big one complex cell to multi celled Big one. We have animals that ocean to land. Big one. I would say the fourth that fits on the same list is going from one planet to multi planets as a civilization that's happening in the next decade with space.

It's No one is talking about it yet, but they will be. I mean, just the fact that, like, we're gonna witness in our lifetimes one of the great leaps for all of life like this

isn't normal. Okay, so I want to talk about extra planetary, a couple of of curious notions that I've been bouncing around my own head. If you had to bet on Maur humans inhabiting state Mars or inhabiting space stations that don't have to conquer a separate gravity. Where would you bet? Because there are competing camps, or at least technologists who are looking at, say, habit ing other planets or saying no, that makes no sense. Because now you're dealing with separate environment gravitational field center. We're gonna just both space stations.

Yeah, it's Mars for a while. Mars is probably gonna have a 1,000,000 people, you know, in the next five or six decades, and then it'll eventually probably had about a 1,000,000,000 people. But I think space stations in the long run way better. I mean, it's gonna seem really crappy to be on a planet. It's gonna be, you know, being on a plan, it's going to seem very old school and very kind of rough compared to the space station. We can you imagine dealing with whether it's gonna seem crazy that you have to deal with weather, that you had to deal with things like climate change is just not not our problem to deal with bugs. That's my view. So happy there's no bugs on the space station. So, um so I think in the long run that but I have a more important question is Are you gonna go to Mars? No.

No. Well, not in the near term. I don't know the first monkey shot at the first, Loris. I'll lead. Quite a few people

work out the kinks on that one. I mean, I can't even figure out how to upgrade IOS without replacing I fucking images. Like I'm gonna let someone shoot me no more. Is No, no, not early. No. Okay, now, picture is 20 years from now, and the last every 26 months Earth lap smarts. Okay. And they end up next to each other. That's when you have this window. Goes every 26 months. There's gonna be a fleet Colonial fleet heading there and another fleet coming back bringing people back round trip tickets.

Um, how about different people on the legs? Yeah, exactly. And first class things will be like fancy people, but everyone jumping around, bouncing around the gravity. It sounds great. Is your gravity cruise ship? The question is for you. It's 2038. Okay. 2020 45. And it's It's been proven for last 20. Trip back. No one's gotten hurt. It's totally safe. Would I visit. Yeah, Yeah.

What is the total time invested in this

trance? Let's say the first the shortest round trip you could do is a 52 months. I would

I would strongly consider it. Okay. I heard. I heard just business a recently on stage before you think about going to Mars, Spend a month in Antarctica.

That's a cakewalk. Oh, and George was way better than Antarctica, but 15 or 20 degrees colder. You can't breathe the air. You can't be outside in the sun without a radiation suit s.

I think it depends a lot on the brochure of Mars Club Med that I received. Yes, all right. Shifting gears a little bit. Aye, aye. Do you think it is an existential threat or not? And if so, what is the time horizon for becoming a a imminence existential threat?

So this is one of the great questions. You know, I probably the subject I've talked to most experts on, so I'm not an expert, but I really know what the experts think. I try to keep up to date if they change their minds a lot, Uh, so it will be fine. Nowhere else will find the world. What I find is very few people who don't think this is gonna basically take over everything. The question is when. And I was surprised that even the people that are pessimistic, they kind of think it might be 100 years from now on. Most awful thing 50 30 and people deep mind in these days of Google, which is like the leading I company. Now they're saying things like, 10 and this is 10 10 till what I'm talking about.

Before any of this moment happens, it's theirs. You understand? Hey, I have to think about two things. There's narrow intelligence and there's general intelligence. Humans have general intelligence. Were smart across the board. Okay, we have. We have social skills. We have creativity. We can understand math. We read We can be creative. We can learn from experience. Just name it.

Name anything here. Just kind of learn how to be smart, then. Okay. But when you think about, um ay, ay, ay, ay is way better than any human of the things that's good at, like checks with the world chess master, right? Of course. And it's the world master everything that it does well, but it's on Lee Good at that. One thing for this, your phone is a your car.

There's a running most stuff at this point, but it's only good at one thing. So the question is, when will I become gain? That same bricks that we have? Women will become broadly smart, and until then, it's still gonna change the world. It's still gonna take a huge amount of jobs and create a whole whole bunch more s. Oh, it's gonna be a massive group of changes that happened even before we get general intelligence. But the question that I was referring to before When do we get to this level where a eyes now smart like we are but way, way smarter with Nick Boston called Super Intelligence where it's it's a smarter than us as we are monkeys. Yeah, So, basically,

if your picture like, not only can a monkey not build this room or not only you know when you look out in the night sky using little lights moving around you. But you're so smart we put those there. We put airplanes and satellites in the night sky, right? So not only can a monkey not do that. You can show the monkey the light. So this building you can't even understand that you did it just will think that it's just there. That's just a moving star, right? So we're talking about something that not only can we not do what this thing can do, we can't even understand that it didn't even if I tried to explain it. That's how smart this thing is. It's a really crazy concept. So things that we think are hard, like curing disease,

poverty, climate change, name it, anything that we consider a challenge. Uh, easy piece of cake for the A I. So that's the really exciting side. And then there's that. What if we're not in control of it the way we want to be? Not that it's gonna be evil. That's this anthem for amortization that people do and try to apply human stuff to this thing that's not human. But when you build a house and there's an ant hill there, you're not like ha, ha, Death to the ends. You just built the house and they're in the way.

So you killed them. Big deal, right? That the fear is that the doing its thing, and then just we're kind of in the way, and we programmed it in a way that we didn't think of this thing. But now it's too powerful. We can change it, and and we're toast or gets it gets annoyed that we're doing something to it that it doesn't want. We're toast. So you have some high stakes here, and which is why I basically we're gonna have gone on Earth because we can play God to every other animal right now. Even a chip chip. Really smart until we put it in a cage. Now, what you gonna do?

We have a gun. We have a Taser poison. It's food. Chips are nothing compared to hard, godlike ability because we've little intelligence gap over them. Little in the scheme of things. When this thing has a big intelligence gap over us, it's truly complaint. God, us. So the question is, is it good God that could solve all of our problems? Or is it like one of those gods in the Old Testament like that guy? So this is what this is what they're talking about. This is why, Aye, Aye. Safety so important. But most of the money in time is going to a I development,

right? It's a lot last question. Then we'll go to Goto audience questions. I'm How do you view happiness just to bring it back to things that we may be able to influence a sleaze? Speaking for myself in a lot of people in this room, uh, how do you view or define happiness for yourself if you do it all?

Yeah, well, I kind of think of. There's two kinds of happiness that you have to kind of deal with. Both one is like my girl happiness like, Are your Tuesday's good? You generally having a good Tuesday on. Then there's like macro happiness. Are you present? You like? Yeah, I'll dig into this current life for 20 years. I love it or you like I was for nine years after college, which is like, Well, I'm doing this now, but I really want to like I should be doing,

you know, that's macro happiness. So I think you have to worry about both. I think that the most important one to get right at the beginning, at least, is macro. I think if your macro happiness isn't there, you know, you're gonna you're gonna have You're gonna You're gonna feel frustrated kind of cloud over you. And then I think you could work on micro happiness, which is about lifestyle. This is what you're so good at this. I think a lot of people here, really both for both kind of happiness, is they look to you because you have a lot of good advice. But I think it might grow you really?

You focused so hard on, like, just really crushing like a Tuesday and I think like, But all life is literally a Tuesday again and again. And then you die. So crushing the Tuesday's title of my next book, Let's get good at it, White sand in Tuesday's. But so yeah, and with the hard thing that's hard is a lot of time we have. So we assume that it's the external world we have to succeed. We have to, you know, get this relationship. Then we'll be, You know,

this is kind of cliche, but we know that it's it's messing with your internal expectations. It's getting your mind in the right place and kind of seeing reality and get seeing what is your ego and what is your fear and what is kind of, you know, worrying about judgment and what is actually really that matters to you and and realizing that a lot of the perceived risk isn't really dangerous. And a lot of the perceived ward isn't really gratifying in this. It's all there in front of you. If you could just look past your primate itself with your very rational intelligence self, just see it and then learn to internalize it often. Suddenly, the happiness is become very clear. Howto work themselves out, and it's often me and spending all our time trying to get to those happiness is with primate kind of self in charge, and that usually doesn't get us there.

So add to that reality minus expectations, is that useful framework for defining happiness? Do you think?

Yeah, I mean, if so, you just say, you know your happiness is like an equation. Reality minus expectations is your happiness, and and so you can work on two things you can work on improving your reality, or you can work on not lowering, but kind of like refining your expectations to reflect what actually matters to you, which will always, always end up with them lowering in a certain sense and maybe maybe going up in another sense. But, um, you know, classic trap, of course, is like,

you know, you're in a better place and you were 10 years ago, but you're just is unhappy because you're the hedonic treadmill concept. Is this term that psychologists use that you know, you just your happiness goes up. Something really good happens even like, you know, the little examples. You get a new buy something new and you wake up in the morning like my iPhone X 10. And you're like, all happy and then, like, you know, every day that goes down in six days later. It's just a stupid iPhone again, but we use this in a macro sense.

You get a new job, you finally get into a really good relationship. Work it out, you know you have a sick friend or parent and then they get healthy and wow and then, instead of just you know, so they obviously way too t get off the treadmill is obvious, just sets over gravity gratitude. There's like what I have what I want and like looking up, We're gonna be really unhappy. And if you could, you know Mountain was going underneath you, But you're not even looking at it. You're just looking up. All the time is gonna seem like everything sucks. You're looking down. You look at this mountain.

It's amazing. Look at all the things I have like, you're gonna be really happy. So like that the gratitude things were really all the You know the thing. We're just right. The good things that happened that day, every night before you go to bed, right? Three good things that happened, why they happened. The reason that people want that. Psychologists say this is good because trains your brain all day thinking What's good? I need to do this thing tonight. It's just what's good? What's good? You're suddenly you're looking down on all these things that are good in your life, as opposed to kind of looking up with what sucks. What sucks about the situation. How is the world wronging me, which is a pure recipe

for unhappiness? Okay, I'm gonna try to put a little icing on top just just to add to that, which is as reading recently about some of the supposedly objectively assessed happiest places on earth. And if you look at them, three of them are Costa Rica. Yes. Tickle, Tickle Buddha. Puro Marcelino. Okay, Screwed up my gender already bad to do in these days, huh? Least I didn't Spanish so

moving on who?

You? I'm gonna move. Move on quickly. Costa Rica, Singapore, Singapore needs You wanna shout? OK, uh I'm all for you. Don't see it as much in Singapore and then den work. All right, so

All right, well, you can You can write a letter. I love Norway, but I will I will.

I will rely on National Geographic. You can write them an angry letter. They are very communicative. That's fine. So Norway also.

But I can only speak. I can

only speak to the dance. But I would give you the official gold medal about silver matter for the dance. And I want to point out a couple of things knowing people in all three places that in Singapore there is very much an optimization for improving your reality. It's very achievement focused and there's a large economic component. Nonetheless, the various combination of factors lead them to be in a very top on the bribes opposite side of that equation, or at least in the alternate side. You have the Danes, and I know a lot of Danes and remember one point without even breaking up any of this. I said. You guys are apparently really happy. Why do you think that is A is a group? They said we have really low expectations, like, Wow, that's interesting Noodle on that. And then I think history is kind of squarely in the middle in a lot of respects,

so stuffed upon her work on both. And also it just struck me that, given all the talk about stoicism and someone that I tend to be people over the head with stoicism in a lot of respects, I would've used a complete philosophical system, checks a lot of boxes, but does focus quite a bit on refining your expectations and preparing for the worst case scenario. So I often had quite a healthy dose of epic unionism and so on, which is more on the opposite side. Tim, thank you so much and we're gonna jump into some audience

questions. Way will definitely be doing

some individual Hollows, but we jump in and see what we have here. And I suspect there might be some curveballs slash bear traps that I don't want to step into. So let me see what we have here. They're with. All right, Uh, you're 20. Have 3 to 6 months pre job. Post college. I take that to mean 3 to 6 months after graduation to do whatever no financial social commitments. And you've already read Tim's books. All right. Thank you for that. How do you spend your time to maximize wellbeing and developed perspective? Amman from Paris? Well being and developed perspective 3 to 6 months now,

you may have already done this. Where's month? All right, so you may have already done this, but if if I were giving advice to the normal American audience for that, I would say travel from those 3 to 6 months, go to countries where you do not speak the language, get deliberately lost in places that are safe, perhaps like Japan or Costa Rica in most places. And for well being and developing perspective, well being would mean deliberately exposing yourself to people who are worse off. Maybe at least financially than yourself. so spending part of that time volunteering, for instance, in this 3 to 6 months and then that will simultaneously help you to develop many, many different perspectives.

That would be just as speaking of someone whose life was changed completely by a number of overseas experiences, which I had starting at age 16 or 17. I never really spent time outside of the US That would be my recommendation. Tim, You have any other any other

thoughts? So I think that's right in line with what I would have said, which is basically travelling to me is like that is another way to zoom out because you're just looking at your life far away. You know, it's like you don't you're not going there to look at your life, But you end up thinking about your life for some reason, being far away, being out of your comfort zone and out of your element. You just have fresh eyes on your whole situation. You can have this perspective kind of. It's like going on a helicopter and looking at it from up there. A lot of things make sense, and then I would have also said, couple that with like, kind of like a hard zoom in on, like reality, which is which I think you'd get from.

I might have said, like, wait, tables were construction. Just do something Where you kind of like just around working people on dhe, You just don't know. It just it just It just reminds you what, like work is like what reality is like, what adults no go through. And then that can help you figure out where you're about to. You know where you're about to be in

what you wanna do. Yeah, for sure. And the travel advice I would not limit too. Someone just getting a college. I think everybody, when possible, should have that experience because the benefits outlast the trip. Because what will happen to most people, especially you. Put yourself in very foreign environments where perhaps you can't even read what is written. Japan, China. Many different examples, right? Whether it's Cyrillic, Arabic doesn't matter.

I and you observe different customs what happened to me, at least in Japan, for instance, my first real time abroad for years and exchanged the only a person who looks like this in a school uniform in a high school. 5000 Japanese kids, right? Pretty easy. Where's Waldo game? But wait, they drive on the other side of the street. That doesn't make any sense that I was like, Wait a second. Maybe we don't make what they take a shower before they get into the bathtub. That doesn't make it. He's Wait a second makes perfect says. And I got back and I realized how many rules we follow are just made up.

They're just totally made up. Very fragile, socially reinforced illusions that we just reinforce. And that's very liberating. You realize, Wait a minute. Like if all of these different cultures do things differently, maybe I don't have to go there to do things differently. I can do that here. Then you start to really question assumptions and you become, in my experience, more experimental. All right, let's go to another question. What trends? Industries topics Are you most excited about right now?

Patrick? Patrick, Is Patrick here? All right, I like that. Hi. Tim applies to both of us. It simplifies matters what trends, industries, topics. And I'm most excited about right now. Uh, speaking for myself, friends, I'm not watching very closely. I have trouble explaining why Really?

I suppose I'm not trying to capitalize on any trends because I feel like particularly having left Silicon Valley in having moved to Austin, which I love on almost every level. If I am spotting trends that I hope to capitalize on by the time you see it, you're too late. Generally speaking, I'm not paying a lot of tension Trends, industries. Uh, I am interested, just almost from an academic standpoint in space travel not so much from a personal experiential standpoint, but specifically looking at inhabiting planets versus building space stations. That debate is interesting to me because you have some of the smartest humans last 50 100 years, arguably with very, very different viewpoints. And whenever that happens in any field, I'm really interested.

You see that quite a few places topics I would say on this might be considered a trend. I'm hoping to turn it into a trend which would be scientific research using current cutting edge technologies to reexamine both psychedelics end M d m. A, which I wouldn't strictly consider the traditional sense of psychedelic four applications too very debilitating serious conditions ranging from PTSD to resist treatment resistant depression, end of life, anxiety and so forth. So I've taken most of my energy and capital that went into start ups and redirecting that to scientific research at Johns Hopkins, hopefully other places, like UCSF and why you also that are taking these compounds that have been used very, very wisely, I think, in certain contexts for millennia, by various civilizations and applying scientific lends to understand the mechanisms of action and the risks involved quite frankly. But how they can be less politicized and stigmatized for unscientific reasons and examines that better understanding of why they do what they do, which could be pretty aboutyou, trends, industries, topics that you're excited about right now.

Definitely, some of those, uh, agree with you on getting the stigma off of prospective altering drugs. But I would also add a lot of cool things going on what feel that also has a stigma called life extension on the stigma that it just seems like. It's like, you know, narcissistic, rich white guys who want to live forever. But the truth is, it's on, and people think it's vain, narcissistic kind of thing. But really what, You could just reframe it as if you just cure or learn how to manage, like four things that kill people basically, which is like heart disease,

stroke, Alzheimer's cancer. Um, it just means that, like and other things going on in health, we can just live a lot longer on higher quality later years. Like who doesn't want that? It's It's like a knee jerk reaction that makes people I didn't want the money, your time into this industry. But, like, I just feel like there were definitely people back when humans lived. On average, 2 40 would have been like, Oh, Dex,

40 is a lot of man like living the 80 year. So now we're all happy about that. No one wants to go back, so it suddenly, you know, I don't know 1 41 40 was the new 90 and 90 was the new 50. Like who's not happy about that? Like so you know, we only say all because at that point you're done, we'll double it because we got used to that. We're managing our own expectations. Were indicted 35. I would be like, Well, it's been good, but like I'm not that all ambitious and exciting because I think I have more decades,

So I think that there's a lot going on. Mark Zuckerberg and his wife are, you know, one of the you know, teams that are trying to cure all diseases by the end of the century, like this is just a machine and the diseases air just a glitch inside the machine. Like if we can have you know, enough nanotech and really fancy I medicine, you know, everything. We can go in there and fix it. This is a fantastic development. The most heartbreaking thing is someone I know that you love dying, especially early. Uh, let's work on that. So I think there's a lot going on there, but I think that a lot more would be going on if the stigma of this is kind of like a narcissistic pursuit would just

go away. Yeah, Thio coming on one thing there in terms of the narcissistic, rich people you everyone should want. The narcissistic millionaires and billionaires spend as much money as possible. You want them to be the people who create the economies of scale for everybody else. On many of the things we take for granted out, like recycling started off being very hoity toity. Affluent experiments. You want them to be spending millions of dollars on something that 10 years gonna be available for $50?

Yes. Yes, Plumbing like sanitation. He's the girl. Rich, rich people thinks for a while, and like then everyone benefits tremendously. So people also get mad. They think, Oh, this is Well, this is just gonna benefit. Like the bridge is unfair thing. We're like, super rich people will be able to live longer. Yeah, for a while.

And then it trickles to everybody because costs come down as we get better. So, like, get over, You know, on

that, uh, if you want to read some, I think very interesting thinking related to what might account to life extension. At least Death prevention. Dr. Peter Tia is willing to pay attention to one of my favorite people. Uh uh. What is the name of the city everyone must visit before they die? Thanks for everything. Steve. Steve Brill Not to be confused with Steve Carell. Let's see it. Yeah, it's a great name. It's a great name. Spelled differently.

Uh, on my list, I would have to go with Tokyo because it has such an unusual combination of safety, cleanliness, extreme weirdness and incomprehensibility, even to someone who speaks Japanese that it provides a really united, unique. I think I just use that twice, and I'm gonna get shit from friends who love to heckle me for using modifiers on Unique. There's no there's no such things very unique, like Okay, all right, I'm gonna say it again. Just annoy them. It's a very unique opportunity to feel extreme discomfort and confusion with elation with next to no riel, harmful consequences symbol. I think that provides an awesome learning opportunity and just a fun trip. So I would say I would say, Tokyo is very analyst.

You still man's here again just in Japan all summer. It's like going to another planet. And you're like, Oh, how did how did this civilization live? And you're on another planet. That's how different it is. Just isolated Western culture has like, you know, infiltrated so many places, and it just hasn't really there. They just have done everything their own way. So you like, How does the cab door open? Oh, it opens by itself. Then I get in and it closes by itself.

That's really cool. So I'd give a different answer. I'll say Hanoi, Vietnam. Just because crossing the street is just crazy. So there's like bites. Just like motorbikes. Just a sea of them See of them going by. And there's no stop lights and it doesn't stop. And what you do is that walkers you just walk. It's like it's like Indiana Jones, like walking over the thing. You just walk and you just and they figure it out and it's unbelievable. It's like, You feel like you're like God walking on water or something. We're just like you,

just, like walk out and nothing happens. But the thing you don't want to do is like we have freaked out towards it like stops, because then then then you're doing something that can't anticipate. But you gotta try Steady, Well paced, strides. Confident? Yes. Okay. Is it the same there? I didn't go down there.

You spent some time in Hoshi? Yeah. Go with the floor. Or else you die. Good. Good advice. Uh, goodness. All right. That one would take us both several hours knowing two of us. I apologize to the person whose name I will not read. Uh uh, Dear Tim, my father was, uh, regarding two crappy pages per day. I'll explain what that means.

How do you structure your days and weeks when you are working on a book? Thanks, Jean or Gene, you musher v. All right. I'll go with I wasn't sure how to respond. So the two crappy pages per day for those who don't know it was advice that I received were regarding writing and working on a book which could be, in my personal experience, a very daunting, intimidating task. And I would get frozen for days or weeks, and I try to write something that wouldn't be perfect. And I throw it out and and a mentor of mine or an author I knew said your quota should be two crappy pages per day. And you told me this story about IBM and how they they demolished the competition by exceeding every sales quota every quarter and just actually steamrolling everyone for a long time. And he asked me, Do you know why that is?

I said no, he said, because the quotas were low. And then people were unintimidated to pick up the phone to make the calls, Uh, and you could do the same thing with yourself with writing. And you do that by making your bar for a successful day to grab pages. That's it. Even if you throw them both out, you never use them. You've won the day you have to cover and, of course, over time there days when you just get your two grabbing pages and they are really, truly terrible. Then there are other days where you overshoot, you're in the flow and you get 10 15 20 pages.

You don't need so many of those two eventually put together. And what kind of a book structuring my days and so on? Uh, I'll be super super specific here because the weeks and months basically look identical. It's just copy and paste of this particular day. I realized for myself that I eat benefit greatly, given historical predisposition to bipolar and all these various things. It's just written in my code, uh, some story. But, you know, it's kind of laughable how predisposed my family is that writing your sunshine is really important. So I write books generally during summer months, and my day involves getting up, not super early,

but for me respect respectively. Early. Which would mean this a 9 a.m. 9 30 Before the sun is setting and I wake up, I meditate for 22 22 minutes to be typically transmittal, meditation or some type of guided meditation. Then I jump in the water because, unlike Long Island and jump in the water to wake up, I might do a little bit of swimming. I hop out. I already have pages from the night before that I want to edit. I will edit during the day, but I do my prose generation at night. That's just when I have the best output. But I can edit do that grunt work during the day I've printed out pages. I will go into a sauna, which requires all sorts of trickery because you start sweating on the pages,

but go to sauna and I will hand edit those pages. Then I come out, take a quick shower. I have a very small breakfast of sometime. Typically same academia. Nuts, eggs very, very small, and I continue to work very often at a treadmill desk, and the treadmill desk works during this period of time at a very slow pace because, say, in the case of tribal mentors, I'm handling outreach and editing. I'm not going to do cos original drafts and composition at the general desk. I won't working the treadmill desk. This is literally the exact day,

and this won't take hours to explain. Then around, say, noon or one PM, hop on a bike with a researcher or someone that I have hired to be with me in the same house at all times. Why is this important? I realized that writing is very isolating for me and it It can catalyze a lot of negative mental states and downward spirals because I feel alone. So I have someone physically there, even though we could probably do the work remotely, They have to be optimistic, which, fortunately my researcher is everything to him is hand clapping amazing, really good influence to have around. So we both get on a bike, so you'll notice there are there. There's a little burst of physical exercise inserted.

Get on bikes ride to this very mediocre deli, and we have Mediterranean wraps every day. For those interested, it is whole wheat tortilla with chicken homis, tomato, avocado added, Always extra cost, and we eat our Mediterranean wraps. And I have unsweetened iced tea plus sparkling water, and we worked there until, say, five or six Sun starts to set, jump on the bikes, sometimes head to the bay, jump in the water again, head home uh,

and then have a snack work for additional 23 hours, then go to dinner. There are two or three restaurants that we go to. That's it, those with rotations. And for all these restaurants, I give a pro tip Jesus. What a long answer, they said wasn't long. All right, pro tip for people who might want to do this. Now it's late. We're going out late, having dinner at nine. A lot of these kitchens close and say 9 30 10 What does that mean? Staff's gonna be fucking pissed that we're coming in right?

As the door's about to close. And I know this because I worked in service jobs Is busboy, waiter in restaurants, forever. I get it. So here's what you do. If three restaurants, you know you're going to going to them for a few weeks, a few months you go to the same restaurant for dinner three nights in a row and then the next restaurant. Same place, three nights in a row. Each night you buy rounds of tequila over and over again for every person who works in the restaurant front of house end, Back of house. Really important. These people will now love you and they will let you hang out for an extra hour, hour and 1/2.

This is really key. Uh, OK, so we do this, then we go home. Not too much to keep up. And, uh, we'll continue to prepare things for the next day. Go to bed. Around one I am saying. And then it's ground hog day over and over again. That's it. And there are very often I would say every other day, some type of kettlebell swings or exercise that is done immediately before leaving to dinner. It's just that day over and over and over.

Yes, I see your residence from Yes. Joanne. Yeah, Genie

got sorry. Training place. Oh,

yes, yes, yes. So important to clarifying question to work where we have lunch. Yes, they're outdoor picnic tables and we will sit down and work outside. That's actually a fairly key point. You have to have a high tolerance for mosquitoes and ticks because it's Eastern Long Island. So caveat emptor on the line disease over, uh,

over to you. You take the opposite. You're 16 hour awake is like a morpheus wad of self loathing that it's basically I don't ask you What do you What do you need with your work? You know, I was like, I need a no that will follow me around and like, shock me if I'm not working and I'm supposed to be working and they were kind of like, kind of. But I, uh yeah, no, no. I mean, I mean, this is where you're awesome at what I admire you for

and you can also, just to be clear, have really regimented, well structured self loathing.

Just this just to make that clear. But I was like trying to memorize that answer because I wanted, like, I think for me the times when I am being productive, I find that two days of the two minutes, two pages a day thing resonates with me because for me, it's like if I get in my bye bye problem when I'm not being productive that I had this in my head. I'm behind on my stuff. I need to work 14 hours. I need 14 hours of writing today on guy have done those crazy hours when there's like, a crazy panic in my life. So I know I can, so I think I can. But without the panic, it never happens. And then six hours into the day, I've already blown it.

I've already blown the day and you get discouraged. And then you start to self fulfilling prophecy yourself. That, of course, I'm gonna blow it. I blew the last three days and then So if I do the same thing I say, I'm gonna write three hours today and then I've had a successful day. It's amazing all the positive, like reward pathway feedback that comes in from feeling like you succeeded that day. And then that night you can go to bed on time because I already succeeded today. Supposed to think, you know, I can't go to bed now. I can't let this be the whole day and that can feed on himself. Something I try to remind myself is like someone who is 33 hours of writing five days a week but really focused like phone is away like deep, deep focus,

writing 15 hours a week like it's shocking how much you can produce, like add those weeks together. 40 weeks later, you have a book, right? The difference between the prolific right and the person, the self loathing person who doesn't write anything is one does 15 hours a week out of their 112 waking hours a week writing and the other 10 out of 112 waking hours. So 1/7 versus 0767 So those two people's days and lives are the same. I mean, it is people, people who can't put something together. They have this daunting kind of assumption that the prolific writers fundamentally different. They're just they just have their working constantly all the time. It doesn't have to be that way, but it's the consistency. It is the IBM thing.

I never thought about that. That's a really great way to get it so true to I mean most, most, most writers I know spend the majority of their time inventing things to do to avoid writing. They're like, but my plants dying. There's there's really no way that I possibly

witnessed it. Needs another massage. Yeah, man, this is

an un constructive environment. The right. It's not gonna be high quality. I don't polish my tennis shoes and so on. Uh, very, very true, right? This will be the last question. And then we'll move on to the next phase of this evening. Uh, what experiments? Questions, Hypotheses Are you wrestling with right now? How have they changed over your life? Where do you think they'll take you now? We may not have a chance to hit every aspect of this, but let's let's start with what experiments? Questions. I popped the season. Let's let's start with you Shit.

So nice having his answering

my wood experiments, questions or hypotheses are you wrestling with right now? And then let's I'm just gonna brush this and go to where do you think they might take you?

Well, it's a little like my last answer. I'm trying to, so my mind is structured, a zay explained in the Ted talk you mentioned with. There's three characters is the rational decision maker who's like should have worked. Right now it's 10 a.m. It's on a Wednesday, very good time to work. Then there's the his pet, the instant gratification monkey who, uh, he has a different idea is a different idea of what 10 a.m. on on Wednesday is good for. And then there's on the two of them go back and forth and the instant gratification monkey wins every single time. Which leaves me when I called the Dark Playground, where I'm like not working, but I'm supposed to be. And the only thing the Onley thing that breaks that cycle is the third character who suddenly wakes up when a deadline gets close or there's some external pressure.

That's the panic monster and the panic monster freaks the monkey out. The only thing the monkey's scared if he runs away and I could get my things done and I'm gonna die at 45 and what I'm trying to learn how to do, especially since I'm about to start my first book next year. So I like you've done 52 books I need to learn from. This man is like, you know, a book is too big a project. You can't just do that all at once. It's like It's like it's some point. You have to learn how to have this internal motivation. And for me, I'm like a you know, a caricature of myself. But there's a lot of people in this room who maybe aren't classic procrastinators, but without realizing if there's no kind of deadline, even if they're not and down to the wire with the deadline,

the deadline itself, just being there is what makes them do stuff. And that's dangerous because actually, a lot of what's really important in life eyes that kind of important but not urgent stuff, stuff that doesn't have a deadline, seeing your friends and family and not changing careers, improving yourself in the long run. So I think like this whole, well, these three characters thing applies to a lot of people applies very much to me. So what I'm working on is trying to just really, really working on, uh, having productive days with nothing in the external world making me because a child eyes not good at that and I trying to be less of a child. That's my that's my goal for the next year. Yeah,

I empathize. Yeah, I do. I do. I do I do most productive person in the history of No, I'm just really good

Is showing, like the high right The high, right? Well, I got really super when I get tired. This is getting all sorts of trouble. I actually, after spending a year only speaking Japanese. When I get really tired, I start to mix up my arse in my house. I'm not shitting you. Um, you speak Japanese? Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it's a cool language,

so And just so you guys know he's gonna die aggressive for a second in Japanese. They have noddy Dutilleux have a Silla berry and the R, l and D. Sounds kind of combined into one thing. That's why not aware the distinction, they kind of got screwed. When God was handing out phony names, they didn't get a lot of sounds. It's really hard for them to learn other languages, but ever rebuff for them. But, uh, I'm showing the highlight riel off like a very mediocre movie. So I'm getting crazy illusion that I'm just knocking out productivity all day, not the case. Which is why would people like can we follow you around for a day?

I'm like No. Absolutely not. Naturally not because you just be like, Are you gonna do something? No, man. I'm like I found some lint in the carpet, and I need to fix this. Not a good like dances with wolves. Experience for the documentary filmgoer. Uh, all right, So what Experience Questions have policies in my wrestling with right now. I'm gonna make this maybe a little soft around the edges, which is not my style, too,

because, like, hard analytical quantitative, But whatever s o, I've spent the vast majority of my life at best, tolerating myself. It's true. Had had Cem really horrible experiences early on that led me to just decide self love is for other people. I could be a really good instrument for competition so I could hold myself into an instrument with a high pain tolerance to be really good at certain things. And that was enough. And then I could get my joy or happiness where I found that from observing other people. Long story impact that fully But suffice to say, like, I accepted really low level of self regard and was really, really on forgiving the brutal with myself. I talked to myself endlessly every day.

We're talking decades in a way that I would never speak to another person. And what I've realized in the last few months, actually in particular is that if you want to fully love other people to make other people feel loved, you can't get away with just tolerated yourself. You cannot, and you have to learn how to forgive yourself for a lot. But more so than that, for me at least, is toe. Have compassion for earlier versions of yourself that you might view is cowardly or ashamed or weak, and I was introduced to that through something relatively new from me, which is called a meta M e T D A or loving kindness meditation. It sounds super woo, and I mean the 20 year old version. It would just be vomiting on his shoes right now. Hearing this,

I go, Oh, my God, really, you're embarrassing. Stop it. But it's been a really profound shift in my perspective and realizing that even if my only goal is not necessarily to love myself, but to do the greatest good I can possibly do with my small amount of time on this planet that I have to put my own oxygen mask on first, and that's something that comes up a lot of trouble. Mentors Arianna Huffington, Sharon Salzberg. It comes up again and again, and I just want everybody to realize this is part of my those new mission of sorts is for people to realize that if you're feeling damaged or flawed, and that leads you to be depressed and have a really, really low amount of regard for yourself, where you're really aggressively brutal to yourself,

that the first thing to realize is that you are not alone in feeling that and in fact, like certainly not everyone in this book. But I would wager and this is just speculation in most cases. But a very, very high percentage have incredible demons fighting battles that we all know nothing. But I mean really with some very, very dark periods. So is that you're not alone and be is that you can actually let go of and repair almost all, if not all, of what you think you should just lock away and forget. So that, I suppose, would be what I am wrestling with right now, working on and try to communicate, and there's really concrete ways you go about it. I would recommend everybody.

Certainly. If any of that resonates. Do yourself a favor. Get a book called Radical Acceptance by Tara Brock. Terrible title. Fantastic Book. Give it a read. I could have a huge impact. Help? No. Yeah, That's a question about psychedelics. I would say, uh, that, yes is my tentative answer,

but I would not recommend that anyone touch psychedelics without professional supervision. There are legal ramifications to consider, and I would take it as seriously as you would, choosing a neurosurgeon to remove a tumor that if Miss operated on, we're result in a fatality. It's a lot of people right now. Sorry, that's about it. Right now, a lot of people are going on Craigslist finding neurosurgeons. My friend's a shaman would just order some stuff from the Internet from China. For I Alaska. We're gonna do it in our slow cooker. That idea. God, that bad.

That idea. So there are many tools. I don't think that's the only tool. Meditation, silent retreats, which I'm not ready to recommend. Except do you think they could be extremely destabilizing? There are many, many tools in the toolkit. But the point I want to make is there are tools and you can start with something that does not involve visiting your ancestors and seeing flashing neon crocodiles in your mind, which could be radical acceptance. Take a look. Thank you guys very much. Thank Tim.