The Daily Stoic - Tim Ferriss On Generosity And Dealing With Difficult People (Pt 2)

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with author and early-stage technology investor/advisor Tim Ferriss on the essence of Stoicism, fear setting, and exaggerating the downside of things. How stoicism helped Tim manage the catastrophe of success and criticism and his podcast Tim Ferriss Show, which is the first business/interview podcast to exceed 100 million downloads. It has now exceeded 900 million downloads.Tim Ferriss has been listed as one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People” and one of Fortune’s “40 under 40." He is also the author of five #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers, including The 4-Hour Workweek and Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers.IG and YT: @TimFerrissX: @TFerriss✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors. ["The Last Song of the Year"] Hey, it's Ryan.

Welcome to the second part of this. I thought I'd give some other Tim Ferriss facts here as I kick off the intro to the second half of the episode. Number one, you may have picked this up in the first episode, but I'm recording here at the Painted Porch. The Painted Porch bookstore would not exist without Tim Ferriss, because he's the guy I called

when I was thinking about doing it. The producer of Tim's podcast is someone who I am very fond of who helped research. I think he started as my research assistant on ego is the enemy. and then Tim poached him and I was very happy to allow that to happen because he's just an all-around stand-up fantastic guy and he was destined for bigger and better things. So that's a fact there. And then little known encounter, Tim and I were both talking at the NextWeb conference in Amsterdam.

This would have been in 2013. We're sitting down, we're having dinner or something. And he says, hey, what are you working on? And I said, you know, I'm working on this book about stoicism. And Tim had published maybe one of the first articles that I ever published anywhere other than my own website, stoicism 101, philosophy for entrepreneurs.

And that had helped kicked off the book. And Tim was very interested. He said, you know, let me read it. And I sent it to him. I think if I'm remembering it right, I emailed it to him. And he came down the next day and said, hey, I'm doing this thing and I wanna buy the rights to the audiobook of the obstacles away, which he did.

And used his enormous Tim Ferriss platform and helped kick that book off, made it a success. And he also did the same for the Daily Stoke and he also did the same for Eco's Enemy. I don't know if you heard about me from Tim Ferriss, but there's a good chance that you wouldn't have heard of me at all had Tim not been such an early and generous booster of all of my stuff.

So I feel really grateful. And I was really excited to have this conversation. He came out to the studio and then one other person that Tim has poached for me, that's very dear to me, my former assistant Lonnie, Tim stayed at my house at my ranch out here in Austin when I was, I guess this would have been, when would this have been? 2016, 2017, he was, I guess it would have been early 2017.

He was thinking about moving to Austin. He was here for South by and wanted somewhere to stay outside of town. So he stayed at my house while he was shopping for houses and he needed some help with some stuff and my assistant Lonnie pitched in and now Lonnie has worked for Tim almost ever since then. So Tim is a great identifier of talent.

Or I guess I'm pretty good at identifying talent and Tim uses me as a feeder system, which I think one of the roles of a boss or a person in life is to help people go on to bigger and better things. And so I'm very happy for them and all their success. Lonnie was out here recently, actually right before Tim did his episode.

Anyways, here's the second half of my conversation with the one and only Tim Ferriss. His podcast is about to exceed a billion downloads, which is just absolutely insane. You can follow him on Instagram at Tim Ferriss, follow him on Twitter at T. Ferriss. He's on YouTube, Tim Ferriss. And then if you haven't read the four hour work week

or the tools of Titans or the four hour body or the four hour chef, any of his books, you are really missing out. He signed a bunch while he was here. Great author, great dude, always thinks about things in a really unique way. And he's someone who's changed my life, not just professionally, but personally,

because I have put so many of the things he talks about into practice. And that's why I was excited to have him on the podcast. And I'm excited for you to listen to this episode. This podcast is brought to you in part by Audible. Every year offers us the opportunity to get closer to the best versions of ourselves. No matter where you are on your well-being journey, Audible is there for you. They have an ever-growing selection of stories to inspire, sounds to soothe, and voices that

have the potential to change your life. Sometimes we need a little encouragement to truly spark change in our life. If you need something a little more than someone simply telling you to be more positive, check out Don Miguel Ruiz's The Four Agreements. He dissects how people impose limitations on themselves that rob them of true joy and provides a simple to follow code of personal conduct to start living life more freely. Get closer to the best you with Audible. Explore a wealth of well-being titles like bestsellers, new releases, and exclusive originals.

Listen now on Audible. and exclusive originals. Listen now on Audible. I have a question about Stoicism for you. All right. I figure, given where we are, this is the right venue. Okay. Of, this is a big question, so if nothing else to mind immediately, choose whatever floats to the surface of the, all the stoic writing that you've digested, all of the stoic writing that you've done, all of the lessons and case studies that you've researched, there are certain things that people glom onto in a not negative way, positive way, but there's things that are, I would say, predominantly

memorable. This is true for my books as well. There's certain things that people tend not to miss. Yes. Right? So like in the four hour work week, the funny enough, one of the things that people always remember is the guest chapter by AJ Jacobs about outsourcing his life with virtual assistants. But they tend to miss, and this is going to lead into my question, the filling the void chapter.

So they're like, oh, good problem to have, ha ha. Yeah, yeah, I'll worry about that when I get there. And then people really fuck it up badly and can end up in existentially pretty difficult places. What are some of the things that are really valuable that you wish people paid more attention to? Ooh, that's a great question.

By the way, I was sitting out in front of Newark Airport, like maybe a year ago. Just smoking your corn cob pipe. No, just sitting there, just not waiting inside the airport. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm sitting there and like a car pulls up and AJ gets out with his whole family.

I was like, what the fuck is this? I went to the gym and I go, what are you working on? He's like, oh, I'm pretending I lived during colonial times. Like he spent a year of his life dressing like George Washington. Like, oh, no, yeah. He was living by the constitution. That's what he was doing.

He is the most patient wife in the world. Yeah. Like the year of living biblically. Yes. Oh my God. Also an amazing book. So good. He's amazing.

But okay. So I wouldn't even fault the audience for this necessarily. I would fault myself. My initial read on like, we see what we wanna see when we're looking for stuff, right? Or we see what we need to see at that point in our life. And so my early takes on the stoicism, on stoicism, I would say we're primarily about what it could give me, right? How it can make me more resilient, how it can make me stronger,

how it can make me smarter, you know, how it can make me more successful. Like I took, I was looking at stoicism at through what it's been for lots of people for thousands of years, which is a form of self-help, right? And of course I understood that he's talking about virtue, he's talking about common good and all these things. But I would say it wasn't until later that I understood so the cardinal virtues of Stoicism are courage, self-discipline, justice and wisdom.

But if you really think about it, eternal virtues as those as in our courage, self-discipline, justice and wisdom. But if you really think about it, the key virtue is justice because it renders, it decides whether any of the other ones were worthwhile or not, right? So like courage and- I can't wait to hear this. Courage in pursuit of the wrong thing

or a cruel and selfish or whatever thing, right? Courage in pursuit, like courage or whatever thing, right? Courage and pursuit. Like courage or discipline or was it? Like if it's not rooted towards like making the world better or doing what the social call the right thing, right? Their understanding of justice isn't like the legal system. It's like, what kind of person are you and what kind of code or values do you have?

I think I came later than I came later to a more full understanding of what stoicism is asking of you as opposed to what it can provide you. Does that make sense? And I'm just finishing this book now on Justice Room to be the third book in that series. So I've been thinking a lot about it more, but like almost all the stoics were active in politics.

Almost all the Stoics wrote books to share what they learned. Like there was this sense, the fundamental difference between the Epicureans and the Stoics, Senegas says, is that an Epicurean basically withdraws from the stresses and complications of life into the garden where they have fun and enjoy themselves and hang out with their friends.

And a stoic is involved in the polis, like in public life. And so I feel like my writing has changed and evolved and my focus on that thing has changed and evolved more. So I can sometimes tell when a fan is upset with me because they're at an earlier place in the understanding of stoicism, which I once was, and they're hearing from me now and they don't get,

you know what I mean? Like they want to- It's hard for them to sort of reconcile the two or maybe just to take on both at the same time. It's like, they're like, I wanted you to give me advice on how I could be a better sociopath. You know what I mean? And you're telling me that I'm not supposed

to be a sociopath, right? And that's the big one to me. I mean, I think I've seen this in your work and I've always admired it. It's something I was gonna ask you. You, from the beginning, like before your books were successful, you were donating like a percentage of the profits of the four hour work week.

You've always been, I focused on not just capturing value for yourself, but I would describe you as a generous person. Thanks, I appreciate that. And to me, that's like a really key stoic virtue, right? Or that's part of that virtue of justice, but it's talking about that feels kind of judgy or self-righteous, do you know what I mean?

It's easier to go like seven stoic strategies to be more productive. Yeah, it is. And I think there's, I mean, I've seen this with some of my writings as well because it tends to be prescriptive nonfiction. And I think that one could make to speak in the defense of the people who are focused on improving themselves that people and them borrowing from Ariana

Huffington at least I've heard her say this, that you should put on your own mask before helping others. You gotta start there, totally. Like put on your own oxygen mask first. And at the same time, or not at the same time, to just add something to the donation. So since the first book, you're right that a portion has been donated to different nonprofits or causes.

I mean, a lot of money at this point. And... If 5% of the royalties of the four hour work week, it's not a small amount of money. Yeah, it may have been, it may be 10, it may be more than 10. Oh yeah, I understand, yeah. And that's been true for other books as well.

I've far exceeded that, but the point that I was gonna make is part of the reason I did that, and maybe this is a very stoic thing, is you could say there are a few different motivations for that. One is to do the right thing and to help things that I think are worth helping, not just to help them financially but to draw attention to them in ways that may exceed my own financial contribution. That's how I heard about Donors Choose. You were saying I'm not donating 10% of this

to charity. You said a specific chair It's very specific what charities yeah, so that's that's that's one the next is that I have Just noticed as a pattern and this could be false false causality, but it's correlation at least people who tie them some way Seem to be generally happier. Yeah Now you can say well, they're probably also, in most cases, highly religious, so couldn't it be caused by something else?

It's like saying, well, people who do yoga are so much healthier and have better teeth, and you're like, yeah, but they also tend to be of a higher social economic class so they can pay for better dental care, et cetera. So I understand the confounders here, but I will say that from a personal experience, so let's make this the third thing,

is that if you give some amount of money away, it's almost like you've created a deliberate hole in the boat that is your finances. And what that does for me at least, is it loosens my white knuckle grip on this thing called financial success. Yeah. Because I've created an automatic release valve where some of it is disappearing.

And as a practice, I think that has... You're not so precious with the resource. Yeah. Yeah. Like I am assuming from the outset there is enough, there is a sufficiency. Not saying abundance necessarily, but there is a sufficiency instead of a scarcity such that I can absolutely afford to give 10% off the top to other things. And that will be a net life quality multiplier, or at least positive for me as opposed to negative and certainly that's been my experience Well, this is a chance we can test the theory of Aristotle So Aristotle says virtue isn't this thing that you are right that you were born as he says virtue is like

playing the flute or Building houses you become a house builder by building houses. You become a flute player by playing the flute. And his point was like, you become a courageous person by doing brave things. And he says, you become generous by doing generous acts. So do you think generosity was something you learned? Was it like a skill that you acquired?

Or do you think it was just naturally always what you were or was easy? Like do you feel like you've gotten better at it? Oh, yeah, yeah, I've gotten better at it. And I'm also, uh, I try to be very surgical with it, right? In the sense that I don't diminish automatically feel good. Let's just say philanthropy. I hate that word.

Let's call it, um, cause giving. The reason the reason I don't like philanthropy is because, uh, it implies, right, like biofilia, like Phil loving, yeah, entropy, right, like anthropology loving humans. And I don't actually, I wouldn't say default love humans. I think as, as, as, as a species were kind of a disaster of a disaster and invasive and very destructive. Is preserving the environment driven by your love of humans or is it actually the opposite? So if I'm working on say with Amazon Conservation Team, which is one non-profit I've vetted and feel very good about from a capital efficiency operation standpoint, that has nothing to do,

well I shouldn't say it, it doesn't have nothing to do with humans, but it's also preserving ecosystems. But where I was going with this is I've become better and better at investing in good vehicles for accomplishing things in a nonprofit capacity, just as I have in the for-profit investing world. The way I look at them is really the same. I also do some feel-good stuff where it's very individual. It is not attempting to scale, which is sometimes important but more often, this word that's thrown around and

a somewhat casual way to justify all sorts of, so oftentimes greedy behavior on the part of rich people who don't wanna donate money, like Scrooge McDuck kind of stuff, Montgomery Burns if you prefer. And I do think that from a young age, and I turned this off for a long time, but like a very deep feeler, like a very sensitive kid.

So from a very young age, and I don't know if my parents encouraged this. Maybe I was just traumatized by like UNICEF commercials with the kids with like the flies in their eyeballs. But from a very young age, my family, I don't come from money, right? Like my family didn't have very much money and we had to make a lot of, yeah, we can get into it.

But we did not have a lot of money, suffice to say. And I gave, even when I was really young, and by young I mean like, I don't know, six, seven, nine, like a part of my life. Yeah, wow. If I got like a little bit of a lounge or something, I would give a little bit away. Because it felt like the right thing to do.

But then there was a large period of time where I didn't do any of that. And I was like, hey, you gotta take care of number one first. Kinda Gordon Gekko, let's solve this problem first. And then I can do good later. And then for a host of reasons, I started to question that logic, both for personal fulfillment and for impact, right?

Like these, sure your net worth might be scaling, but is it scaling inflation adjusted at pace with the problems that are also compounding? Maybe not. So I think in a lot of cases, the answer is early intervention with less money is better than late intervention with more money. Certainly if that's true in medicine, it's very true

with lots of the problems we see in the world or just causes that we want to further. So for me, I wrote this blog post, God, ages ago, back when I had hair, I mean, it was probably 2007 or eight. It's hard to believe that they're thousand plus blog posts. I mean, I forget about that sometimes. That was an important bridge between the book and other things that I sometimes forget about in terms of connective tissue.

But what this piece called the, something like the karmic capitalist or principles of karmic capitalism, where I laid out some of my early thinking on this. capitalist or principles of karmic capitalism, where I laid out some of my early thinking on this. So I took a long hiatus from that type of thinking and have come back to it, but it is a practice. It is a practice and I found your comment on justice as sort of the, this isn't gonna be the best phrasing, but the sort of master determinant of virtue

or lack of virtue when you're right, these sort of parent virtue above others. In a sense, I've been thinking quite a lot about mother qualities, right? So for instance, what is the rate limiter? Which is slightly different than what you were saying, but if you talk to like Pavel Tsatsulin about physical fitness.

So he popularized kettlebells in the United States and really knows his stuff. And for him, it's like strength first. Like strength, if you look at longevity, if you look at health span, if you look at your ability to execute other things, he's like, before you worry at longevity, if you look at health span, if you look at your ability to execute other things, he's like, before you worry about flexibility, before you worry about mobility,

before you worry about endurance, strong first. That's the name of his company, in fact. And I was like, okay, that's very, even if it's inaccurate, I happen to think it's accurate, it's helpful to sit and think about that for a second and interrogate that concept. And so to give you a window in, right, I do five bullet Fridays newsletter.

Every Friday it goes out to a couple million people. And I capture things as I'm out in the world that are going to later make it into five bullet Fridays. So as we're recording this, something that I'm working on are a few quotes that are compatible that all touch on the same thing, which is laying out a hierarchy of virtues. And they word it very eloquently. Maya Angelou is one.

And she talks about courage as the mother virtue, because all other virtues at their testing point. Yes. Right? Yeah, and that quote, it's all, I think there's a C.S. Lewis version of that same quote. There are a bunch. And it's true, and I think I said this in the book, I did on courage, that courage is the essential version,

because you can't do any of the other things without courage. And it's true, it's just, the absence of justice or the absence of it being the right thing immediately renders whatever it is worthless. Like if you win the Medal of Honor for the Confederacy, it's like there's something hollow about that. Like there's a Lord Byron quote, he says, "'Tis the cause makes all that hallows

or degrades courage in its fall." Like what it is in pursuit of. Like there's so many lonely stands you could take. Those old timers love their rhymes. You gotta start rhyming more. Well, that's a poem. But that was from a poem. But the point is like there's a lot of lonely stands.

Doesn't mean you can't do some stoic spoken word stuff. Anyway. If you're taking the lonely stand, but it's wrong, you know what I mean? Or it's in act, like it's rendered worthless. Both of these are interesting. I mean, it's, I'm glad that you brought up justice based because now I can think about both of these side by side.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. And if you have a common failure mode, right? It's like if something dysregulates you, if there are certain issues that seem to repeat, if you have certain patterns with your significant other, it's like, okay, is this,

because justice can also be hijacked by the righteous mind. Of course. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So, but it helps to have a list, like a checklist to run through. Anyway, just wanted to say it's, it's, I, I'm really glad you brought it up because now I have a completely different lens on a list that I might have automatically ordered with courage at the top.

In a sense. I'll send you the book. I just sent it into the publisher like three days ago. But you know what? I'm gonna, I'm gonna let people in on some inside baseball. So part of the reason, it's done. It's done, it's finished. It's finished. 100%. Okay, all right. Then maybe I can take a look at it

because we've had this experience before. You sent me finished books with pages ripped out. You're like, delete this page, delete this page. Yeah, if I get set a manuscript, part of the reason that I'm just like, I don't read manuscripts is because I cannot turn off editing. And so I will do a full book at it

that takes an absurd shit ton of time because I can't turn it off. And I actually, I'm not gonna be an editor, but I think I'm a better editor than a writer. There's lower stakes when you're in there. Lower stakes, right? I'm just like, yeah, we should definitely take out the appendix.

Yeah, no, you don't really need your left toe. We can take that off, because I don't have to actually deal with the consequences. But that level of detachment, which I have with very few things, it's helpful, right? Like when I'm looking for editors, I try to embolden them to be willing to say,

yeah, we should lose your left toe. Yeah, well, I mean, you always, whenever you've sent me your stuff, you always say something like, what's your least favorite chapter? What chapter would you cut? Right, where's it too long? If you had to cut a chapter.

You're never like, what do you like? No, I'm like, if you had to cut 20%, what would you cut? I remember very specifically, I rented an Airbnb in Santa Barbara. I was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I just sold my first book and I've been working on it and I just needed a break. I needed to get away and I needed to have some quiet time to write. And that was one of the first Airbnb's I ever started with.

And then when the book came out and did well, I bought my first house. I would rent that house out during South by Southwest and F1 and other events in Austin Maybe you've been in a similar place you've stayed in an Airbnb and you thought to yourself this actually seems pretty doable Maybe my place could be an Airbnb. You could rent a spare bedroom You can rent your whole place when you're away Maybe you're planning a ski getaway this winter or you're planning on going somewhere warmer while you're away You could Airbnb your home and make some extra money towards the trip. Whether you use the extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home could be worth more than

you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca. Hi, I'm Anna. And I'm Emily. We're the hosts of Wanderer's podcast, Terribly Famous, a show where we bring you outrageous true stories about our most famous celebrities. Our latest season is all about the catwalk queen Naomi Campbell. For years, Naomi had to fight to be treated fairly in an industry that was overwhelmingly white. That drive saw her break down barriers and reached the pinnacle of high fashion. But it also got her into some dangerous situations when it spilled over into an anger she couldn't control. In our new season, Naomi Campbell's model behaviour, we tell the story of how a young girl from South London became a trailblazing black icon but had some very public falls

of how she stood up to the British tabloids and won, and the lengths she had to go to to be the first black woman in history to make the cover of French Vogue. But she risks losing it all when her explosive behavior lands her in court. Follow Terribly Famous Wherever You Listen to podcasts or listen early and add free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. Hello, I'm Alice Levine and I am one of the hosts of British Scandal. So I want you to

imagine that you're being offered £500,000 to introduce someone to your ex. I mean the answer is still no. So you shake hands and agree to do it. But it's all about to get a hell of a lot more complicated because the you in this story is Fergie, the Duchess of York, ex-wife of Prince Andrew, and the person who's offered you half a million pounds is an undercover tabloid reporter who's recorded the whole conversation. Oh, and just one more thing, promise, last one, it's all about to appear on the front page of the news of the world. In the later season of British Scandal, we take you inside the story of the so-called fake shake, the investigative journalist Mazem Amoud, and the series of explosive

sting operations he used to con public figures. From Fergie to singer Talisa and former England football coach Sven Grøren Ericsson. Follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondry Plus, on Apple Podcast Apple podcasts or the Wondry app. Honestly, a million pounds and I still wouldn't introduce you to him. And that's for your sake. So to go back to generosity, the other thing I think it would point out, because again, it can feel very sort of firstworldly where it's like,

we associate generosity and money. But of course there's many ways to be generous, right? Like can you be just like, I think we talked about competition earlier. It's so easy to live in a world where you think things are zero sum, right? And that if somebody else gets ahead, it means it's coming at your expense in some way.

And I think even there I've had to grow and I feel like I've changed, which is like, I now feel in some ways more excited when I help someone else succeed, or if I open a door for someone, then I do with my own stuff, right? Like, and the idea of just, but that's a result of having helped people

and experienced how wonderful that felt, right? Do you know what I mean? Before you do it, it feels like stupid. We can also paint it in a very maybe helpful self-serving way, which is, let's put generosity aside for a second, although it is one way to describe some of these behaviors. If you, for instance, well, let me just put out an observation first, which is I think that generosity is inversely correlated to wealth in the first world.

As a percentage of what you possess, I actually believe that from what I've seen, like the more money people have, the better they are at the money accumulating game, the less they want to part with it. And that's probably how they accumulated in the first place. Right. And I think, look, I'm sure I'm guilty of that

on some level, right? Like you have to value money to accumulate a bunch of it, unless you're just okay, fine. Like you got drunk and bought the Powerball and there you go, you have a value money to accumulate a bunch of it unless you're just okay, fine. Like you got drunk and bought the Powerball and there you go, you have a few hundred million. That doesn't usually last very long if that's the case. But I'll put it this way. If you, and this is something we've been talking about

a little bit earlier directly, but mostly indirectly, and that is if you go into Starbucks tomorrow and you buy, you're paying for your coffee and you give the barista 20 bucks and you're like, I'm paying for the person or two behind me. Yeah. That act implicitly says,

I have more than enough. Yeah. That is a very uncommon perception of of reality in say the United States yeah in a go-go-go Sure accumulate capitalist society. Yeah It it's it is just I think very uncommon like I have more than enough yeah, that is what that act says I have extra I have extra not only do I have what I need I have extra is what that act says. I have extra. I have extra. Not only do I have what I need, I have extra. Is what that says. Can you afford, forget about 20 bucks.

Can you give like five bucks? And it's like, hey, whoever comes in under five bucks. If you can afford to go to Starbucks to buy your veinti frappuccino with God knows what, diabetes fuel in it, then- Your breakfast milkshake. Yeah, if your breakfast milkshake, you can probably afford to pay for someone's like,

next small black coffee. And that is a non-trivial act as a sort of statement of self-appraisal. Sounds silly, but it's like try it. But you're reinforcing it. Actually the beneficiary of that is you. Yeah, yeah, try it. Because you are, you are not just saying that you have enough.

You are acting as if you have enough. Like as they say, act as if you are acting as if you have enough. And then it becomes truer to you at a more like cellular level. And then so when you hear about some natural disaster or somebody your employee asks for your raise or something, you can go like, I don't need to approach this from a scarcity mindset, which is the default setting.

I think of the human speed. I mean, we come from a place where there was never enough food, right? Their survival was, we were always teetering on the edge of survival. And then depending on where you come like more recently, you know, your grandparents grew up in the depression or you grew up as an immigrant in a poor country,

like depending on what that is, it's even up in the depression or you grew up as an immigrant in a poor country. Like, depending on what that is, it's even compounding just the biological urge of like never enough save some winter is coming. Right? So you're practicing and teaching yourself, you're developing the virtue, as Aristotle says, by doing the thing. Yeah, and you're like,

and practicing gripping it lightly, right? And by the way, that small act of paying for somebody behind you, as an easy example, that transcends money. Yeah. Right? Which is why I think, well, I tend to do better in crisis than I do with the small paper cuts in life. Yeah, yeah, I tend to do better in crisis than I do with like the small paper cuts in life. Yeah, yeah, me too.

So my like my work to do is with the little annoyances, often very often human factors. Yeah. This is where justice gets me in trouble. It's just the principle of the thing. You know, that's, oh boy, now Tim's about to really punish himself. But to the extent that I've made progress on the crisis side

and to the extent that I've made progress on the paper cut side, I think it's through these little things. And those things compound and they become a habit. Well, it's important, you know. And it's a habit of thinking, by the way. Yes. It's the habit of action leads's a habit of thinking, by the way. Yes. The habit of action leads to a habit of thinking.

And vice versa. And vice versa. You can probably give me the attribution is so much better at this than I am, but it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting. This would be an example, I think, potentially have that.

They're not mutually exclusive, but that would be, that would be an example. It's funny, right? The obstacle is the way, which is from this quote from Marcus Reales. He does talk a lot in meditations about how like difficult circumstances, obstacles or fuel or whatever, but specifically that quote, I truncated, like I shortened it.

I didn't include some of the beginning and I cut out some of the middle, but that fuller quote is about annoying, obnoxious people. It's about, he says, it's about the people who obstruct us. Right? And I mean, he opens meditations with, he was clearly perpetually annoyed with human beings. And he would have had to interact with lots of them,

probably many of the worst of them, right? As his job. What was his line? It was like, when you leave the house today, expect that you will find people ungr them, right, as his job. What was his line? It was like, when you leave the house today, expect that you will find people ungrateful, rude, entitled, these guys, selfless. That's the opening of meditations, right? Like that is for, to his credit,

the first book is all about gratitude, but then when he gets to the actual book itself. But I still have a few things to say. But everyone else sucks. Like these 20 people who helped me are awesome, but everyone else fucking sucks. But even the rest of that quote, you know, he goes like, we're made to work with each other.

He's like, these people don't know what they're doing. He's like, they can't implicate me in ugliness. And he's like, my job is to put up with them and work with them. Like it's funny, like the famous part is like how shitty everyone is. That's what everyone remembers. But he catches himself halfway through that paragraph

and it ends on a very positive note to be patient and generous and collaborative, you know? So it's funny, like we see what we, we see the confirmation of like, yeah, people are that way. But what we kind of conveniently ignore is what he's saying we have to do with those people, which is be good to them. I have a top secret Stuck life hack.

Oh. Giving some wording for the thumbnail. And this is borrowed from a friend of mine. I'm not gonna name him because the way that he phrased it would actually be much more offensive. But he's been, I've observed a visible difference in his state of ease in the world. And I was like, what's going on? He's like, oh, basically, I've just decided when I go out in the world that I'm going

to treat everyone as if they have a debilitating disease that affects their like mental and emotional regulation. And it just makes it so much easier to deal with everybody. It's like you're not gonna anger at somebody if they're handicapped Yeah, right like how insensitive would that be? Yeah, so when you go out it's just There you go folks the philosophical way for that expressed is act as if No one else has free will and only you do. Which is like, they are programmed. There's some person pulling puppet strings, making them do all the things that are bothering you, frustrating.

So they're utterly blameless and can't be held responsible for their decisions and actions, except for you. You do own what you do. And there is something about that that I think there's an element of truth to that. Or it's like, you know, act as if Adam Smith said, again, we think of Adam Smith as this like ruthless

practitioner or philosopher of capitalism, but he also writes a book called A Theory of Moral Sentiments, about like how we should be good people. But he basically says like, act as if there's an impartial observer following you everywhere, just going, hmm, you know, like to everything that you do.

Like little hall monitor with a clipboard. Just like, could you justify it to that person? You know, and a lot of times like they're not got or anything. He's just saying like they're just watching. Like how, how much would you do, how much differently would you active other people were watching?

And it does kind of, I think, keep you on it. So you would, you tip a little more, you'd be a little bit more patient. You know, you do all the things that you wanna do, but you think you can get away with not doing it. Here's another lead domino, let's call it, just to get fancy, that if tipped over, tips over a lot of other things.

And I will likely be doing this in the next year, probably in the next quarter. And it's so straightforward. And I haven't tracked the author, so I don't know if they've been embroiled in scandal or something. There's no reason for me to expect that, but like just in case, because I don't want to.

Yeah, I mean, you talked about Scott Adams earlier. People just like not be awful. So I can use your work, which I like. Yeah. Just, just for, for this snapshot in time, but I think it was Will Bowen. Might be the pronunciation, B-O-W-N. In any case, it's the 30 day no complaint experiment. Yes.

I think this is the first blog post you ever read. It was a very early blog post. And if you want to change your life, you put a bracelet on, it could be a rubber band, and every time you complain, you switch to the wrist. It might be 21 days, but it's three or four weeks. And if you make concerted effort to not complain at all for, and you achieve a solid, let's call it even two weeks without switching that

bracelet. Your quality of life will change completely. If you have some improvement, let's just say that can be gained, which I would say is true for most people. And it's a forcing function for a lot of the stoke practices. It should be a rubber band and then instead of switching, you just have to. I wonder, yeah, you know, I suppose you could do it a whole bunch of ways. You could get like an opus day, cat and nine tails, might be a little awkward in said Starbucks. If suddenly, bitch, it's.

Samantha and I found that. So like, obviously we worked together and so, but we're not always together. So we would like get home in the afternoon or the evening. And we'd be like talking about like work stuff, right? And we realized like our kids thought we were fighting because like we weren't mad at each other, but we were both complaining slash venting about stuff.

Right? And if you're a kid, you don't really understand what's happening. You're like, why is dad talking negatively to mom? And why is mom talking negatively to dad? None of the animus or the frustration was directed at each other, but it's the person we were communicating it to.

And so it was like, we realized one, we just shouldn't, like first off is like, okay, let's not talk about work around the kids, if that's how we're gonna do it. And then second, it was like, this shouldn't be the, everything's going great. You know what I mean?

Like at the end of the day, we're actually quite happy with everything, but we're just like picking the end, we're picking to end the day by like ruminating on and complaining about all the things we don't like. Like we're not setting this angle and like, this happened well and this happened well. And what about this?

We're just using our limited time together to fucking curl garbage at each other. Kovetch. Yeah, exactly. It's a very human thing. Of course. It's a super human thing. And I'll give just one tip. If people pursue this exercise, read the blog post because I thought about it much more completely when I wrote that, the no complain experiment, my name, and it'll pop right up. And the book is great. I really, really found the book incredibly helpful. What is a complaint?

It becomes important to define this before you embark on this experiment. You need to have some rules of play. And I would say one of the critical, one of the critical details that I at least implemented in my life, because there are going to be times when you have to discuss something that is negative, that sucks, that is just bad, that is a problem. But how do you prevent that from being categorized as a complaint?

You talk about what you're going to do about it. I'm not complaining, but that you're going to do about it. I'm not complaining, but that's the way to go. Yeah, that doesn't work. That's yellow card, switch your band. You talk about what you're going to do about it. Yeah, right. Right.

And you talk about like next actions, who's going to own it, how you're going to prevent it in the future. If you don't have that addendum, it is complaint, do not pass, go, restart. Well, I'm glad you said that because like, sometimes I'll talk about like, you know, the Stoics were tried to be dispassionate, they tried not to complain, you know, they tried not to lament,

they tried not to be angry and people go, why don't you tell that to the civil rights movement or something, you know, like, like, there's, they weren't, Martin Luther King wasn't complaining, right? Like protesting an injustice and then activating a large group of people for a redress of those grievances. It's not passive.

That's not a complaint, right? He wasn't like tweeting like this sucks, it's not fair. Right? Like he, it was so much more profound than that. So there's a difference between objecting to something or trying to change something and then complaining about it. And that's really, the Stoics are,

and the complaint challenge, it's really about the reveling in your impotence is the problem. Do you know what I'm saying? It's the title of my next book. That's the title of my next book. Middle-aged man's guide to life. Yeah. Like, and it's important that we see the Stux as people

who led social movements, people who ran for office, people who started things. You know, you have little like acronyms for books because the title is long. So you could, this one could be RIP, R-I-Y-P, but you can shorten it. You can get fancy with some old timey capitalization, make it a little pseudo German anyway.

But you know what I mean? Like there's a difference between doing something about a problem and just, you know, lamenting a problem. Right, and this, so this no complain experiment with the qualifier that I just mentioned. Yes, we'll force you To think very carefully about what about what is in your control? What is not because if it's out of your control and you start to talk about it and it's negative guess what you're fucked Now you have to switch your band and start over. Yes, so it's it's a it is very much a forcing function the other other pro tip

I'll give If you're gonna try this Delete Twitter from your phone. I would just, whatever you're doing right now, just delete Twitter from your phone. Like you just said, quality of life, improve it right there. It doesn't matter what your resolution is for the year.

Just start by doing that because it's not improving your life in any way. And by the way, it wasn't improving your life like a year ago and now it's like a thousand times worse and more toxic, so it's just not good for you as a person. chance to simply scream. Thrills everyone can be part of. Across all four Walt Disney World theme parks. Wow, that's so cool. Feel it all for yourself at Walt Disney World Resort, where Disney thrills us like for a special ticket offer just for Canada residents, visit Disneyworld.ca slash tickets.

Hello, I'm Elizabeth Day, the creator and host of How to Fail. It's the podcast that celebrates the things in life that haven't gone right, and what, if anything, we've learned from those mistakes to help us succeed better. Each week, my guests share three failures, sparking intimate, thought-provoking and funny conversations. You'll hear from a diverse range of voices, sharing what they've learned through their failures. Join me Wednesdays for a new episode each week. This is an Elizabeth Day in Sony Music Entertainment

original podcast. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, if you want to control your outputs, control your inputs. Totally. Be very careful about what you put into your mind. And if you want to see what it can do to you, just see what it's cost to the richest man in the You gotta be very careful about what you put into your mind. And if you wanna see what it can do to you, just see what it's cost to the richest man in the world. Like it's not good for your soul,

it's not good for your reputation, it's not good for your mind. I would say too, like on the complaining thing, one of the things I try to work on is like, like if you run a company or business, it's not quite complaining what it's close to. Like you kind of have to have a policy or you have to communicate inside your culture.

Like don't come to me with problems, right? Because that's also a form of complaint. Like this is wrong. It's like, okay, but you should have sat with it for five more minutes and come to me with what we're going to do about it. Because otherwise, like imagine a bit, imagine especially a big company.

Like imagine someone has a thousand employees. The thousand employees come to one person with their problem, that person is just gonna kill themselves. Yeah, or if they come to multiple people, it just becomes this game of problem, hot potato. Yes. And that's a huge waste of everyone's resources.

Yeah. What are you gonna do about the problem? What is the problem presenting us as far as options? And they might all be bad options, but you can't, it can't just be like, here's negative information, do with it what you will. Yeah, I have a Google document that is like the commandments of sort of TFE,

which is like Tim Ferriss Enterprises, right? Which is not the real name of my company, but it's just easy shawarhand. And one of them is at the very top is if there is a problem come to and it needs to be discussed you need to have you need to have at least two options that are ranked order. Yeah. And you can explain why you've chosen your top option. What are the other commandments or what are some of them? Some of them relate to tactical, basic procedural things like calendaring, right?

So this is gonna be- Put it in, like it doesn't exist if it's not in the calendar? Yes, but it's more specific. So for instance, this is gonna be very in the weeds, but people might find it helpful. So if someone or if I offer, say, make this up, reviewing annual blood work

with a doctor's office, and you send them two times for a potential call, they might take a few days to get back to you. But if you live in a world where a lot is scheduled constantly, you need to block out those potential times. And in the entry and say Google Calendar, I would have people put a question mark at the beginning of the entry.

That just means it hasn't been confirmed. It's blocked, but it hasn't been confirmed. And if there's not a very unbend... If there's not an immutable policy for doing that, things are gonna get double booked, things are gonna get lost, and it's gonna get very messy. And then you just create a lot of work,

you create more work for more people. So there would be, say, a commandment of that. There's actually a separate Google Doc, which is just calendar rules. Yeah, like tactical, this is how it license me. Calendar rules. But what are some general philosophical commandments then? I'm gonna think about this,

because I know that we have two or three pages, but it's been a long time since I've been in that document. I have two, if I use the word. Let's hear yours, yeah. I wrote down, because I'm gonna do a whole list, but my two, they seem related, but they're separate. So one, there's a sign in the kitchen at Perse that just says a sense of urgency, which I love.

I've seen it, it was in the four hour chef. Yeah, and so like that you have to do things quickly and related to that, my other rule is start the clock. So like, let's say it's gonna take someone else like at a different like to get back to us or process something or manufacture, it's gonna take someone else like at a different, like to get back to us or process something or manufacture it, it's gonna take a month, right? So if we take two weeks, dicking around, thinking about it,

it actually takes six weeks, right? Like part of it we control is when we start the clock. Like when we hit the ball back into their court and it's their problem. So I am continually frustrated with and appalled by the waste of like, okay, if we like a bunch of there, because we're doing it for Christmas, bunch of signed books, if we don't get the books

packaged and signed by Saturday at 9 30 AM, because the shipping deadline is 10 AM for the post office here, then we might as well not fucking do it until Monday at four, which is the next shipping deadline, right? So we got start, like, we're adding two days to that clock by not starting it here, right? And so I find myself repeating a lot,

like start the clock, don't, if a video editor has to work on something, we want them to have as much time as possible. So start the clock by giving them the materials, the outline, all the things they need to start the clock. So that's one of my big things is just, and that's how I think about life is like, I don't procrastinate, I start the clock.

A book's gonna take a year. I don't spend, you know, a bunch of time wondering if I'm gonna do it, when I'm gonna do it. I start the clock. Well, what's your current, when do you write typically now? Just the mornings, like nine, like, sorry, like eight 45,, depends on school drop-off, but let's say 8.45, if I'm still writing by noon,

that's like a long day of writing. So it's like, it's a very short concentrated windows, and if you do it day in and day out, it adds up. So if you start the clock, it adds up. If you don't start the clock, it hasn't started adding up. So I have a commandment that relates to starting the clock and it really just relates to making faster decisions when you have, and which is very often the case,

incomplete information or information that might change. It's like if it's reversible or if it's an acceptable cost, yeah, IE acceptable loss, just book multiple things. Right. If you think, if you, if you think I might fly at this time and this time, but it's going to take like a week or two, yeah, don't try to hold that in your head. Yeah.

Just book both. And then you can cancel one and pay the fee. Yeah, exactly. Just hold that in your head. Yeah, just book both and then you cancel one and pay the yeah, exactly just just sure if it can be reversed or Cancel that minimal cost in some cases. It's at full cost. I'm willing to bear the brunt of that Sure, and I think it's it's free and it was it that caught him in your head that you couldn't do both Yeah, yeah, then then I want people to move quickly in part because working memory is so faulty. And even documentation can be very clumsy, right?

With like a million Google Docs scattered all over the place or notes and people lose track of things. I mean, we do have basic infrastructure and tools that we rely upon like Asana and so on, but that would be another one. Effectively setting rules for people to make faster decisions and explaining what types of decisions would fall into that category is one. I have one that's you better have a reason.

And so by that, I mean like, let's say I see someone, they made an editorial decision or they made a content decision or they made a business decision or whatever. And I disagree. And that's just a fact of life. Like you can't preemptively weigh in on every decision. The whole point of life is you have to delegate decisions, right?

And so people on your team make decisions. And I accept that I'm gonna disagree with a lot of those decisions where I get upset or where I will come to not be able to work with a person who's when I go, okay, so you sent this out at this time or you did it this way. And I go, why? And they're like, oh, I don't know. Or, you know, like it's just how it came or whatever, right?

And if they're, if the decision, even if it's really bad, even if it costs a lot of money, even if I totally disagree, even got a lot of money, even if I totally disagree, even got a lot of people upset, if they're going, well, what I was thinking was, and then they have logic behind what they did, then we can have a conversation and be like, okay, I totally see that, here's why I disagree,

here's how I want it to go forward. But what you can't do if you're making decisions that ultimately reach lots of people as like a media company does, is just unthinkingly do shit, right? And so one of mine is like, I'll respect your reason. I may disagree and I may correct that reason and I may override that reason going forward,

but you have to have a reason for the decisions that you make, which you think it would be, everyone would always have a reason for why they do things, but welcome to life, they don't. Yeah, yeah, totally. There's a, there, there are a bunch. I mean, this is another procedural one,

but it saves a lot of time, which is with rare exception, because there are exceptions, but with rare exception, if someone requests a meeting with me, or I call. Number one, for me Zoom, yeah. Number one, Zoom has introduced more problems

than it has solved for me. Like phone calls on a cell phone are great. Yeah, I can walk or drive it. Exactly. I do not need to be sitting in my uncomfortable chair staring at a screen any longer than is necessary. So there's a hierarchy in terms of what I will and want to do. But in addition to that, if someone requests a call,

the first thing is generally as a response will be, Tim would love to do this. He's currently heads down on some deadlines. Could you please just shoot over a couple of topics or questions to get the ball rolling via email? Yeah. And then if that leads, after I've reviewed that probably on a one-on-one call

with said employee, if that has been raised to my attention and there are criteria for that, then if we book a call, almost always it's gonna be 30 minutes. Yeah. What's the smallest, you have like a maximum or like a normal unit of time, right?

Like so I think people are too casual with hours, right? It's like, hey, I'd like to meet and they go, okay. And then they set it in the calendar for an hour. And you've just said it's going to take an hour. Yeah, I mean, if someone has requested a meeting with you, which is what I deal with more than the opposite, if you do, if you have a 30 minute block, there's a good chance they can go to 45 if need be.

But block it out on 30. I prefer calls that are used for decision making, not problem defining. So pretty much always an agenda, even if it's just a few bullets will be requested because Tim likes to be as prepared as possible. Something like that. Yeah, sure.

These seem basic, but man, do these little things add up over time. Yeah. And very small, repetitive tasks done inefficiently can cripple you as an individual contributor, especially if you are trying to block out extended periods of time to do things. So another yellow slash red flag would be, and this is not verbatim what's in the document, but let's just say that three things come up

in a given week in a similar category, like of a similar type, that need to be turned around that week. They were not predicted. A system is broken. Like there needs to be turned around that week. They were not predicted. A system is broken. Like there needs to be a process fixed. Sure. Either that pattern of related fires,

that urgency. Solve it further upstream. Should be solved further upstream. That then comes to, and I mean, it might seem strange. Hopefully it doesn might seem strange. Hopefully it doesn't seem strange, but like a lot of the stuff in the four hour work week, I still lean extremely heavily on. And the basic framework, I would modify a little bit,

although the acronym you'll see in a second is a little less appealing, but in the four hour work week, you have DEAL, right? Oh, how clever a deal, that works. Okay, definition, elimination, automation, liberation. In this case, I would say it's definition, elimination, automation, liberation. In this case, I would say it's definition, elimination, automation, delegation. Unfortunately, that's both dead. But the idea is you need to be very clear if you're going to be trying to determine, say with

80-20 analysis, which I still use all the time, Pareto's law, to identify the few inputs that produce the disproportionately large outputs, you kind of need to know what targets you're aiming for. You really need to know, and that's definition, and there's a lot more to definition. Being very, if you're not clear on what you want, the likelihood of the universe delivering that to your doorstep with a bow on top is very low.

So, I've said before, and I remind myself of this a lot, that the world rewards the specific ask and punishes the vague wish. And definition then is step one. Then you have elimination, which is like, what golden fetters or less than golden fetters do you have that are hindering you from efficiently trying to reach those objectives golden fetters do you have that are hindering you from

efficiently trying to reach those objectives or address those things that you have defined? What are the activities, right? The, if we're doing an 80-20 analysis, right? The 20% that produce the 80, well, that means hypothetically you have 80% of that pie chart left that you should trim. Yeah. Okay, elimination, getting rid of as much as possible.

Because a lot of people skip that step and we're seeing it right now on steroids with chat, UPT, like people doing a lot of meaningless bullshit very quickly. And like doing something quickly or efficiently does not make it important. So eliminating as much as possible, especially if you're gonna have a very lean team,

which I would suggest anyone should aim for, even if you have a thousand employees. So definition, elimination, automation, this is using technology. How do you do it more than, so you'll do it once and you get. Yeah, setting a system or a policy, which could be very simple by the way,

it could be having a virtual assistant or an assistant or an employee or maybe yourself where you have a recurring calendar reminder to do this thing so that it doesn't pop up in the middle of your week unexpectedly, oh shit, property taxes are behind, oh wait a second, some guy showed up at the farm saying that I'm fine. So whatever.

Yeah, if you're sitting down and writing out your mortgage check each month, you fucked up. You should be automated. Right, right, like that's something that can be automated. So automation can be a something that is implemented manually, right? Like a, I have a reminder every morning, which is like do these three low back exercises.

So I don't need to think about it. You're automating the willpower and the contemplation. Right. So then there's the automation. And automation also, by the way, I was looking at some of the tasks that I've assigned to assistants in the past. We don't need to get derailed here.

But I track a lot of the AI developments pretty closely. And I do experiment with these tools. And I took the language that we had put in several Asana tasks for people to manually do. And I looked at their response, then we loaded the exact, more or less like 95% identical language from that Asana task into chat GPT

to see what the output would look like. And it was like 90% there. Wow. And it was instantaneous. Yeah. No comms overhead. Wow. And there are drawbacks.

Sure. I'm not, we don't have to get into them right now, but the technology is evolving so quickly. As soon as that stuff is really easily elegantly, seamlessly integrated with OpenTable, integrated with Kayak or directly with airlines or these systems underlying reservation systems with, say, concierge services have access to it. They're not calling all the airlines individually to negotiate on your behalf.

Once those integrations are there, I really feel like two of the places that are going to be massively disrupted and suffer economically from AI. There will be benefits, but will be as two examples, India and the Philippines, call centers, virtual assistance. It's going to be, it's going to be very challenging, but that's an example of some degree of leveraging technology and reducing interpersonal overhead. And then at the very end, you have delegation. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. And that process is something that I try to instill also in my employees, in my team. Like, think these through in this order. Yeah. You don't need to be doing everything. Everything needs to get done. Yeah. That's your attitude towards them and that should be their attitude towards tools, systems.

Yeah, and if you're thinking about, if you're doing a lot of stuff, because I am not gonna keep an eye on all the balls that are being juggled. If there are certain things that are being repeated, come to me with a suggestion for a systems improvement. I don't want you to have to set. Yeah, so we've made a bunch of systems improvements

in the last six months, and I think we will you to have to set. Yeah, so we've made a bunch of systems improvements in the last six months. And I think we will continue to do that. The most neglected step in all of that is elimination. For a lot of reasons. Well, I would say the most neglected step. Actually, maybe at the top of the funnel. Yeah, to me, and people miss it about the forward work, we can why it's such an important book

and why I do think it's relationship to stoicism is so important. The subtitle that book about lifestyle design, right? Like what do you want your life to look like? Because maybe, I mean, maybe for some people they do like to do that stuff. But if you don't think about Seneca's thing is like, if you don't know where you're sailing,

no wind is favorable, if you don't know what you want your life to look like, then you can't do any of that stuff. Like for me, like I've said this, I just started a new assistant and I was like, look, my ideal day is there's nothing in this calendar. Not like I'm not working. There's nothing in the calendar

that I'm working all day on things I actually like doing. I'm living my life. And so I now know from experience, I don't like meetings, I don't like phone calls, I don't like things that take me away from what I like doing, right? And that's family and work. And so you've got to start with like,

what do you want your life to look at? What are you trying to design for? What are you optimizing for? And then there's all these great frameworks for being optimized, but you got to know what's. And a great, a great forcing function for systems if you don't have a lot of practice, talking about practices, right?

If you're trying to sort of change your mode of thinking, your way of pattern recognition, your way of problem solving by acting first, consider doing many retirement. And that's minimum three, ideally like four weeks off the grid, or which doesn't mean you have to be on like, in a canoe on the Amazon. It just take everything away. Yeah, it just means

you are not allowed to fight any fires. Yes. If you just go on a one week vacation or even a two week vacation you can let things turn into a blaze and come back and try to fix it. Three or four weeks very difficult. Typically that will force you to put in place policies, rules, systems, and ongoing types of delegation that will then persist past the point that you return. That's the whole intention. So that would be another recommendation for folks. If they seem to do a lot of ad hoc things,

they're very busy and they suspect maybe these things could be eliminated, maybe these things could be systematized, but they never seem to have the time to do it because they're just caught up in the day-to-day. And I end up there too, by the way, then look out over the next six months or year, plan of many retirement,

that will force a lot of things to happen. Yeah, we spent a month in LA this year, and so we had a pet sitter, like while we were gone at the house. And then it was amazing, right? Cause I mean, no one died, everything got tinkered and we were like, oh wait, you could have this while you're home too.

You know what I mean? And you could just have the fun part, right? And so you got to step away and come up with something that operates while you're away. And then you can go, okay, what part of this structure or infrastructure am I keeping? Because what's the point of the success if you're a miserable mess all the time? Right.

Yeah. Dude, this was amazing. Yeah. Thanks so much. Yeah, super fun. Thanks very much. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you

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