0:00I'll borrow a huristic from Rammit Seti who is better known as a sort of finance guru of sorts has a great podcast where he interviews couples about various money problems and so on but he'll ask people what would it look like to invest 10 times more in one or two areas that matter most. So for me I am trying to invest 10 times more in my health. What would that look like? This is another absurd question like the Peter Teal question. Even if you don't have an
0:28immediate answer, it forces you to think differently about your life. Okay, investing 10 times more in health, what would that look like? Investing 10 times more in relationships, what would that look like? Those are the two big ones.
0:40Let's hop into it. And the first question I will attempt to address is from Val N. The question is, what does the 4-hour work week look like in a world of agents?
0:53Some of you will be familiar with the first book. 20th anniversary is coming up in April of 2027.
1:00And here is my answer because I have been asked this in private settings and I've thought about it a fair amount.
1:08The book structure is laid out as a four-step process and that process is D A L. So the acronym is deal and those letters respectively stand for definition that is defining exactly where you want to go pointing yourself in the right direction then assigning or calculating the total monthly income and other numbers that
1:38are necessary to design a particular life or lifestyle. Then E is elimination. That is removing using 8020 analysis and other things all of the trivial many so that you can focus on the critical few. Then there is automation. We're going to come back to this which as the word would imply is using processes, technology and so on to automate as much as possible. When the
2:04book came out initially in 2007 that was focused in some respects on virtual assistants but that gets too much airplay. They are a means to an end and I still use plenty of humans but really it is defining the rules and policies that govern your life and your business and following those with very pristine categories of what you will do and won't do and only optimizing the
2:34things that have been pre-identified and then left with room to breathe as the critical few. So that's D E A. And then L is liberation, which is taking advantage of things using the time and the void that you've created in the most enjoyable but also high leverage ways possible. And my feeling is that in a
3:01world of agents, in the world of AI, and I'm invested in a lot of the frontier labs, I have a lot of exposure to behind the-scenes conversations with smaller companies that are at the cutting edge.
3:16I would say that the first two steps definition and elimination are going to be more and more important because technology tools and AI in particular are accelerants. They make more of whatever is. And if you do not first identify the critical few, the very very limited set of things that stand a
3:43chance of making a huge difference.
3:46AI and so on simply multiplies the useless. It multiplies the unimportant, the trivial, the distracting. And you can end up then trying to automate all of those things.
3:58So far with I would say the vast majority and by vast majority I mean 90% plus of the use cases I've seen people are taking things that probably shouldn't be done at all and they're doing them very very quickly and using AI to create more work not reduce work.
4:14That is why AI creating infinite leisure time where people spend all of their time basket weaving and painting with watercolors is I think a completely false promise. No technology has ever delivered that. Many have been ushered in with that promise. None have delivered. And I think AI will be the exact opposite. When used as a blunt force instrument, it will create much more work, much more stress, and you
4:42will drown in the unimportant. So, definition elimination. I'll stop there for now. But nothing in that book from a principal perspective is new. It was a collection of best practices from you could say millennia but certainly several hundred years and I was acting as a curator of those concepts and they were included because I expected them to age very well.
5:12The tools will change right whether you learn to draw or not the basic principles of drawing metaphorically speaking remain the same. If you then want to use a pen, a pencil, watercolors, acrylic, you still need the fundamentals. And the fundamentals are definition and elimination. I'll add one resource to that. Read old books [sighs and gasps] that contain principles like the effective executive by Peter Ducker would be one that stands out. It's very
5:40short. It is very very tactic and principal dense and you can update the things that are outdated very easily.
5:49Next question is from David Jay. Of everything you've put into the world that gets quoted back to you, which piece do you wish most people would stop following, and what did it cost you to realize you'd got it wrong? I went through all of my books thinking about this question and I would say that there is not a whole lot that I could identify as a blanket answer to that question.
6:15And the reasons for that are several.
6:17The first is that I really try to write books that will be durable and evergreen.
6:23So I am in the editing process looking for cuts I can make with anything that is overly timely. I do that in the podcast also most of the time.
6:37However, however, however, I would say that it's important to keep in mind not just with my book, but with all books you read, in what chapter of life the author was writing said book. So, if for instance, you're reading many books written by an entrepreneur, you may want to pick up the book that corresponds to your particular chapter in life. I wrote the 4-hour work week when I was 29. I am now
7:0549. And as you approach the tail end of your life, and I'm not quite there hopefully, but with the experience of friends and family passing, with accidents claiming the lives of friends as a plane accident, plane crash did with a friend not too long ago.
7:26You reframe things as your responsibilities change. As you have say a spouse, family, grandkids, whatever it might be, as you retire, when you hit these particular milestones, the lenses with which you view the world, the way that you value different things changes, of course. And for that reason, I would just be aware of where someone is in their journey when you read books. So that is the caveat that I would add to
7:55what I have put out in the world. There are things that I think are neglected that I wish people would pay more attention to, like the filling the void chapter in the 4-hour work week. That I think is a critical step for preemptively heading off a lot of the digital malaise and overwhelm and sense of meaninglessness that is ramping exponentially as we certainly I imagine
8:24most of you have felt on one level or another. But I will stop there for now and keep plugging through. Next one is from Daniel and I'm going to try to summarize this because it's a long question, but Tim, I'm 46 and a difficult crossroads. I've built businesses, led teams, etc., etc. He's had a lot of professional and personal setbacks. He's found himself in a state of paralysis.
8:55I'm highly introspective. I I journal, read, exercise, and spend considerable time trying to understand my behavior.
9:01But I've started wondering whether all this introspection has become another sophisticated form of avoidance. Pause.
9:07Tim interjection. I catch myself often doing the same thing. Here's back to the question. My question is, when someone has lost momentum and confidence in their ability to execute, how do they rebuild trust in themselves and regain agency over their life? more specifically, what would you recommend doing in the first 30 days to break the cycle of overthinking, avoidance, and inaction? Of course, it's hard to give a catch-all answer to this, but I have spoken with friends who are in your
9:36situation. I have close friends who have been in your situation. I have friends who are currently in your situation. And I've been, I think, psychologically, in a somewhat similar situation.
9:46And what I have seen work is a bias towards immediate small actions.
9:54What I mean by that is and Atomic Habits by James Clear does a good job of outlining this. I think BJ Fog out of Stanford also does a good job of describing this is starting with small actions that cumulatively inevitably will have a larger impact and uh simply beginning to put action on your daily menu. So for instance, five push-ups before each meal, right? It could be 10 minutes of meditation immediately before
10:23bed using an app like the way or anything else. It could be and I think this is one of the stronger tactics in the beginning making an effort to brighten someone else's day and express gratitude by reaching out say via phone call or text better phone call and thanking someone because the question I think implicitly acknowledges something that is for people like me for many of you listening
10:51or watching perhaps is easy to fall into and that is the trap of self-help becoming self-fixation which is a recipe for self-rrimation and I think poor mental health overall. So adding in something that is as simple as a call to someone else once a day or in person could be a barista at a coffee shop thanking them introducing yourself etc. Starting to layer in being very
11:18conservative small actions that allow you to rebuild trust in yourself as an agent of change. Right? That's probably where I would start. I would do less than you think you're capable of doing so that you are able to do it daily.
11:41Do it daily so that you are able to convincingly reclaim the story that you are a person of action. It is rebuilding your identity and you start simple and then over time as you develop confidence.
12:00It's very hard to trick yourself at the deepest level. So you need proof and the proof is daily action. So as you rebuild that then I think you will find it easier to take a slightly larger bite and then a slightly larger bite. But do the minimum effective dose first. Start small. As much as it might feel like there's a rush, you have time over the span of several weeks to develop that muscle.
12:28That's what I've seen work for me and for others who are close to me. Next one. This is from and I apologize if I completely butcher this name, Marad. I am a professor research of of communication in Japan and have been following you for many years, including professionally. My students and I often discuss metacognitive aspects of your podcast in our seminars and the question is if possible if your podcast was a one question only podcast
12:57what question would you end up asking your guest and why and I'll stick with that there are more questions but again we have a long list I would well at first thinking about this question my my question that I came up with was, "What are you most excited about and [clears throat] why?" And then a follow-up, if I had one, would be, "What keeps you up at night and why?"
13:22But I revised those. And I think you'll understand why, so I won't belabor the point. But it relates back to Daniel's question about action. I don't want high concept abstract discussions. So I would rephrase both of those, and again, I'm cheating. I could ask either one of these as a one question as long as I'm allowed to ask follow-ups. And I think we could have a very fruitful conversation.
13:47So rather than what are you most excited about and why, I would ask what are you most excited about and what are you doing about it?
13:55All right. Similarly, what keeps you up at night and what are you doing about it? I'm more interested in when the rubber hits the road. What actions is someone taking or what are they considering doing with whether it is the excitement or the concern, the worry, etc.
14:13All right, next one. This is from Victor T. Tim. The forces pulling people apart feel bigger than any of us. Old friends are deep in their own rabbit holes with different feeds, values, even realities, and AI will probably widen the gap. Tim interjection to state the obvious. Not only are our old friends deep in their own rabbit holes with different feeds, values, and realities. So are we. Sad fact, but that is also true. You've said, back to the question, you've said your best years are the ones where you've spent the most time with your
14:43favorite people. How do you stay close to people whose world has drifted from yours and how do you decide what's worth the energy? What's worth the energy is a much bigger conversation. And in the book that I'm about 80 90% done with now, codenamed the notebook right now, I really spend a lot of time on that. But let me give you an answer. And the first is in terms of staying close to people
15:11whose world has drifted from yours. I would say number one, hone your ability to communicate.
15:20Sharpen the saw. That is your responsibility. So read books, whether that's like crucial conversations for instance. There are many others I'll probably mention later in this Q&A podcast. And then if you're trying to I don't want to say stage an intervention because that implies a certain level of moral superiority but if you're trying to reconnect with friends who you feel have drifted maybe into the land of nihilism
15:48or pessimism or complaining. Let's just take that as an example.
15:54Then my suggestion is rather than giving them advice from on high, which very rarely goes well, I would take your own advice first and tell them what you're doing.
16:09Or andor you could suggest doing things together like social media cleanses, deleting social media apps from your phones. Trust me, you'll survive, probably thrive in response to that.
16:22experimenting with things like 30 days or 20 days of no complaining. If you search my 30-day no complaint experiment in my name, you'll see how I've approached that in books that support it. Could be language, right? You could ask them to check you raise a finger maybe every time you use an absolute.
16:43Everyone, no one A, B, and C always does X, right? A, B, and C never does Y. finger, right? Ask them to correct you when you mention absolutes because you think it's reflective of stories you're telling yourself that are disabling, that cause stress or upset you, etc., etc., right?
17:06And if they're paying attention, they will get the message without you explicitly judging them, let's call it for what it is, right? So, that is one of my recommendations. And I suppose to also be captain obvious, I will say sometimes people drift too far and it's very difficult to reconnect.
17:30Good news is that there are amazing thoughtful people all over the world and that is still true and sometimes paths diverge and not all of them are worth trying to salvage nor are all of them salvageable. And I will say just as a side note, and it's going to be a while before this book is out, so I don't want to tease something so far in advance, but the notebook is in some
17:57ways the spiritual successor to the 4-hour work week really built accidentally for the world of AI. I think that it will really help with the definition elimination and question of what to put energy into because humans are not evolved to deal with infinite optionality. And that is what these tools seem to provide. It's actually very very very dangerous. Not dangerous in the world exploding, humans turning
18:27into paper clips kind of thing, [laughter] if you get the reference, but precarious for the human psyche. Next one is from Pavle. The question is, how do you distinguish between this needs more time and this is never going to break through and what's the earliest signal you can act on before you've wasted another year? So for many of these questions, I will try to grasp the spirit, the gist of the
18:56question and answer it in that fashion.
18:59So a very good question. In other words, what do you decide to further commit to even though you're not seeing obvious fruits from the labor? That could be professional, could also be personal.
19:12And how do you separate that from the things that are on some level never going to work?
19:21Well, I think in the case of say business, I'll just use that because it's simpler to unpack. You could borrow say a question from Peter Thiel as a thought exercise first. I know he's controversial but he is very smart and has placed a lot of very good asymmetric bets over decades. His question is roughly and I'm paraphrasing. If you had to accomplish your 10-year goals in the next 6 months, what would you do? Okay.
19:47So, applying Parkinson's law, creating a very tight deadline for yourself, and I know this seems impossible, even if it's just as a thought exercise to journal on or to speak into Whisper Flow, for instance, so it transcribes your 10-minute brain dump and you can throw it into something like Claude for cleanup. How would you answer that? And the point of a question like this is not to produce an answer automatically that allows you to accomplish your 10-year
20:16goals in the next six months. It's to force you out of your routine ways of thinking. It is to free you from constraints that perhaps you've artificially applied to the situation.
20:29All right? It's a way of finding perhaps the non-obvious. Or as one of my questions I repeat often would go, what might this look like if it were easy?
20:39Right? These go together. And then I would also spec out in advance. Are there milestones that I could reach say in the next 6 months that are guaranteed to give me much more energy? And I say that because that is the fundamental currency that gives you endurance. And if you don't have endurance, you have no competitive advantage. So that is I think also a key question. And last but not least, I would ask friends
21:09and if they're truly kind, not just nice, you can ask them to do this. Ask them to red team. Red teaming, you can look up this concept. It's applied in many different circumstances.
21:23The red back in the day referred to the Soviets because it was used in a military context. But effectively, I'll give another example. You could hire hackers to try to break into your corporate system, but they're still good guys. They're on your payroll because you are asking them to act as an opponent or a bad actor, right? So, you're asking your friends, in other words, a question like the following,
21:49which I learned from one of the best CPG investors, consumer packaged goods.
21:56Think about anything you might buy in a grocery store or a GNC, drinks, food, you name it, right? Very, very, very good. His track record is absolutely absurd. And he's also built multiple companies to huge exits. And one of the questions that he always asks founders is if you guys fail or have a
22:22huge breakup in 3 years, what are the most likely reasons? Uh the breakup question can really open up a can of worms, but you could ask your friends, if this company, if this project, if this relationship failed in two years, you have to force their hand because most people want to tell you what you want to hear. They want to be encouraging even if you're going in the wrong direction. So you have to force them. You have to paint them into a corner. So if this company, if this
22:52relationship fails in 2 years, what do you think the most likely reasons would be?
22:58Okay, that does not give them the option to back out. If they try to back out, then you ask somebody else. But I would really try to force the issue because it is common that friends thinking they're doing you a favor will encourage you to pursue something even if they think you're terrible at it. Maybe you're who knows you are hoping to be a professional musician as a vocalist, but what your friends aren't telling you is you're actually terrible. [laughter]
23:26Right? This happens all the time.
23:30Or behind closed doors, they're like, "Man, you know, I can't tell them."
23:34Nobody's ever going to buy that, right?
23:35You want to take all this stuff and bring it to the surface if you can. And questions like that are very helpful.
23:40Next question is from Brandon D. What is your latest toolkit? Any updates or items I've discarded related to age related vision problems since your interview with Dr. Jeffrey Goldberg? All right. Now, this is going to sound a little funny. I have found things. Now, you'll notice that I'm wearing very, very minimally magnified glasses at the moment. That is because I am on book deadline and it
24:08gives me another 2 hours of endurance and it is a game of tonnage on some level to finish a book. It's a lot like a marathon. It's like, oh, you're 90% done. Congratulations. You only have 50% left. It's one of those situations. If I were not on book deadline, I would not be wearing these. The most interesting technology, the most interesting tool that I've come across is something called Orics O R YX.
24:35And it is software that allows you to, it's pretty incredible, fix your near-term vision without changing your lens or anything else. As you get older, your lenses stiffen and they have less accommodation. Therefore, you end up holding your iPhone and so on at arms length and then you run out of length in your arms and that's why you're turning on the light on your iPhone at restaurants to read the menu and so on.
25:05I used the Oric software and I'm an investor in this company which only happened after I tested it because I used it for 30 days, 8 minutes a day and I went from not being able to really read anything at this distance to being able to read a menu with tiny font at night in a restaurant with very dim lighting and that is [ __ ] bananas.
25:33So, the tool is not widely available.
25:36They're still piloting it. It's based on very good research that has been published. However, if you guys want to try it, I mean, look, there aren't many spots and it's not cheap, but I'll tell you what the deal is. And that's why I have iMessage up because I wanted to tell you about it. If you go to tim.blog/orex blog/orics o r yx. And if you're hearing this after the live stream, you can still sign up for the weight list. So I would encourage you to do that if you're interested. It works. And for a lot of
26:06people, it's durable, meaning it lasts months, years. It's something I've never seen before, but they're basically training your upstream visual processing to get better at distinguishing blurred images and constructing a reality that is sharper. It's kind of like that fake tool in all of these police crime scenes and television shows where they're like, "Enhance image." And you're like, "Come on." Like, it's
26:35pixelated. In reality, you wouldn't be able to enhance image. That's ridiculous. But with your brain, it turns out that you can do this. And I was so so skeptical. But if you go to tim.log/orex, the use of this on a tablet is usually 1,300 bucks and they're offering a 100 spots for $9.99. So if you want to try it, give it a go. Zero pressure. But that is, I would say, the most
27:04interesting thing that I have found.
27:05There are eye drops you can use certainly that give you a temporary increase in accommodation of the lens. I think there's a place for that. You just have to be careful with the version you use because you increase the risk of certain types of injury.
27:19And I will leave it at that. So, as soon as I'm done with the book, I'm going to take these off because you want to abstain from using glasses for a period of time to the extent possible to derive maximum adaptation.
27:35But I will say I've never seen anything like it. It is something that kind of defies belief. So, I'll leave it at that. For those of you who are interested, there are 100 spots. So, you can take a look at that. I'm going to plant a seed for you all because I'm going to have a question later.
27:52that I want your input on and that is related to doing more unscripted podcasts like the random show and I'm interested in knowing what formats you would like to see or that you would watch or listen to. Okay, don't post your answers now, but I'm going to ask that later. So, we're going to come back to that and I'd love to get your comments in the live stream of comments and people will also have the opportunity to put on X if
28:20that's easier for some reason. Okay, next question. This is from Luke O.
28:26Great question. All these are great questions or I wouldn't even be reading them. Here's the question. At this stage in your life, what are you deliberately choosing not to optimize anymore and why? Well, it's good to define this term optimize, right? I would say that often it can be thought of as bleeding the stone. I mean, you're really trying to ring every last drop of efficiency and improvement out of that wet towel. And I
28:56still do that in some areas. But your question, I'm going to answer perhaps in a slightly odd way. Rather than telling you what I'm not optimizing anymore, I'm going to tell you what I'm overinvesting in because when you overinvest in things, they crowd out a lot of the things I would put on that no longer optimized list. All right. And I'll borrow a heristic from Verit Seti who is better known as a sort of finance guru
29:26of sorts. Has a great podcast where he interviews couples about various money problems and so on. is very very good at what he does. And I'm paraphrasing so I can't remember the exact wording, but he'll ask people what would it look like to invest 10 times more in one or two areas that matter most. He is not focused on ultra frugality or foregoing your lattes or anything like that. So for me, I am trying to invest 10 times
29:56more in my health, right? What would that look like? This is another absurd question like the Peter Teal question.
30:02Even if you don't have an immediate answer, it forces you to think differently about your life. Okay, investing 10 times more in health, what would that look like? Investing 10 times more in relationships, what would that look like? Those are the two big ones.
30:16And if you invest 10 times more in your health and 10 times more in your relationships, there's not a whole lot left over, which is a good thing. you have less free roaming time to completely burn on wasteful activities that might have a veneer of productivity. So I'm going to leave it at that because I I think that is the most
30:45high leverage way to approach these things at least that I have found. So focusing on your more to do 10x list as opposed to your not to optimize list. I will revisit this with a question that comes up a little bit later. This one is and I'm gonna butcher this name.
31:02H asks the following question and I'm going to you know what I I'll read most of it. There's an appealing idea that the good life is something we can consciously design. Identify our values, understand our priorities, eliminate the unnecessary and organize our circumstances accordingly. Right? That would echo certainly the emphasis on the de and the de of that. That's my comment. But so many of the most meaningful experiences in life seem to arise from things we couldn't have
31:29planned or optimized for. Do you think there's a point at which being too deliberate about the life you're building makes you less receptive to life that might emerge unexpectedly? How do you leave room for serendipity when you're naturally inclined to be intentional? I do 100% agree that if you overengineer your life, you are almost definitionally less receptive to life that emerges.
31:54And first and foremost, I'd say there is no magic answer for this that you apply every day in an ongoing way. At least not for me. You can have periods of heavily engineered focus and you can have periods of in my case reasonably engineered serendipity where I am placing things in my calendar that are likely to produce these chance encounters. Okay. And
32:23you know I would say that my approach to this is one that embraces the belief that these are not mutually exclusive.
32:33For instance, I may very deliberately try to interview, and by the way, that's just talking to people, but interview in my case, people who completely disagree with me, have totally different sets of opinions. For instance, someone I know in Austin, perhaps not surprisingly, is politically from a voting perspective on the far right. I'm not on the far right. I'm not on the far left.
33:02I'm very issued by issue.
33:05But this particular friend is very very smart. Okay. So to dismiss him as some type of non-thinking knuckle dragger doesn't hold water. He's very very intelligent and he's very good at questioning assumptions. So sitting down and asking questions there opens me up to ideas and opinions that are not going to get served up in a feed that has been
33:35personalized to reinforce my own biases which is by the way every feed on any platform. So that would be one example and there are and very [snorts] interestingly this is what makes me think sometimes that I'm in a simulation I wrote down a book I wanted to mention and then someone else asked about the author 10 questions later of course I read a book called the surrender experiment by Michael Singer this was
34:02recommended to me by Kevin Rose and it was deliberately to offer me a counter example I didn't know before I read it if it would be good or bad example of less overengineering with intention and planning and blueprinting of your life. Very much enjoyed it. I think that if you squint a little too hard, you'll
34:28see that Michael must have said no to many, many, many things in order to focus on some of the things that are outlined in the book, which raises questions about overall surrender versus selective surrender. So maybe that's a conversation I'll have with Michael at some point. But it's so extreme in counterbalancing my default way of being in the world that I read that book and I did find it very helpful.
34:53Coming back to the overinvesting, what would it look like if you invested 10 times more in health and relationships?
35:00These are also two things that open you up to serendipity.
35:05at least how I approach let's just say health which includes group fitness activities and things like that coaching and so on interacting with people I would otherwise never meet in a professional context right so these are all I think attempts at coming at your question or the problem that you're underscoring but I do agree with you that yes if you
35:32are overly deliberate if you indulge too heavily in the illusion of control, you make yourself blind to things that are around you. And it's a fine line because you can certainly if you take on the identity of someone who goes with the flow and simply surreners to everything, you can end up a floating generality as Seth Goden would say, where you indulge every
36:00distraction as an opportunity. Okay? And I'm certainly writing a lot about that right now and what the sweet spot looks like for me and some people that I know.
36:12Rob M, this is a perfect question actually. Tim, what do you get from these live streams besides content etc etc. Part of it is serendipity. I don't choose the question you guys submit.
36:23I'm usually in the business of asking questions. So for me this is a way to get a gestalt of what you guys are thinking about. What are people I respect and I do respect you guys. My audience tends to be very well read, very curious often has a bias towards action and I was able to look at for instance I mean I won't show this cuz it'll dox a bunch of people but patterns using LLM analysis of the questions that come in
36:53and then I'm able to answer or attempt to answer some of these questions. So for instance AI comes up in roughly one of five submissions. Okay. And then it goes into the reasons for that. Health questions asking about my protocols, the frequency with which different types of questions come up and so on and so forth. Right? So these live streams are an opportunity for me to do something I know I enjoy doing. I get energy from these
37:19while also being forced out of I don't want to call them ruts but patterns of thinking and asking questions by virtue of getting a bunch of stuff thrown over the transom that I cannot predict. So that would be my answer for that.
37:35That's funny. Somebody's asking me crimp sloper or pinch.
37:40How's climbing going? I would say pinch.
37:43I'm working on my extensor strength.
37:46after my elbow surgery from a year ago.
37:48So, I'm very focused on pinch slopers still my nemesis. True for so many. And crimping I have to be a little careful with because I got to strengthen the DIP pip joints and all of that jazz in my fingers which I'm working on. If you're interested in how to strengthen your fingers, revisit my episode with Dr. Keith Bar. B A R. His stuff really does work. [laughter] Who would win in a fight between Tim and
38:17Kevke Kev? You see more battle tested, but Kevin's got that old man dad strength. You know, it's an open question. I think I would immediately go for Kevin's ankles. He's got huge triceps, but I feel like I could work on those ankles. So, [laughter] TBD, this is a question. What type of OCD treatment did I mention in a few of my episodes that was helpful? I mentioned accelerated TMS and you can get it from reputable providers.
38:45I'm involved now with a company called Ampa Health because I think their device is very very interesting for targeting and also kind of therapist and user friendliness. But a lot of ketamine clinics and mental health clinics, let's just say Rit large, will offer accelerated TMS.
39:05The protocol that I've used, which it was developed by some folks I'll probably have on the podcast at some point, is called the 1D protocol, O ne- D protocol, where you preload with a drug called descloerene. It's a very mild, well, I shouldn't say mild neuroplasticity agent, but it increases neuroplasticity before you go into the stimulations. and they've compressed from say a three to four month duration of protocol down to one week which is
39:34what Nolan Williams and others did at Stanford and elsewhere and then they have since with this drug assistance which makes you just more malleable for the changes compressed it into one day and Jonathan Downer at AMA Health was one of the pioneers behind this and it is I would say most established for treatment of depression.
40:00It has also been applied to generalized anxiety disorder GAD and it would seem like there are also other applications to OCD which is in my case a close cousin of the GAD and sleep improvement at large. So that is the protocol you're looking for intermittent theta burst and I could give more specifics but I'll probably save that for another time. You can do some homework though. There are places that offer this. It doesn't have to be
40:29the AMP a health device. There's Brainsway which is I would say the market leader as far as hardware goes.
40:36Then there is Mag Venture as far as hardware again. But you should find someone I think who's familiar with accelerated TMS and ideally and uh this is based on my personal experience familiar with the 1D protocol and using this descerin which is sometimes abbreviated to DCS because most people cannot take 5 days off work or it's very expensive to do
41:05that or they use up a bunch of their PTO etc. And the more time you have in the clinic, the more time you're using clinicians, the more expensive it's going to be. So those are I suppose the the main points that I would make on that before getting to other things.
41:22Milonga tango or waltz. I loved the walts which is a very circular form of tango. I just love the waltz music.
41:35There are many many songs that I could listen to. I don't generally listen to tango music in my off time and it's been a long time since I've hit the dance floor but I would say walt tango milonga in that order. I always found milonga very difficult for some reason. Okay, related question to the earlier ones from Daniel. Any developments on medicine as electricity? Yes, bioelectric medicine certainly I I mentioned the accelerated TMS. I do think Kevin Tracy and veagal nerve
42:05stimulation, most of which is bogus and nonsense online, frankly. I hope to have some announcements related to that soon.
42:12But if you're getting the Simba conscia on the ear, you are able to access some limited portion of the vag nerve and there's interesting stuff to be done there. You can also use box breathing or other cold exposure, other types of combinations to improve veagal tone. I recommend the great nerve which is a book by Dr. Kevin Tracy for diving more into that. And then the conversation with Michael
42:41Leaven out of toughs I had on the podcast is a great one to dig into.
42:45Susan, do you see yourself becoming a parent in this lifetime? Yes, 100%. 100% without any shadow of a doubt. And you're very kind. I think you would make a great or wonderful dad. Thank you, Susan. Yes. Did you see there was a device in Time magazine 2026 top inventions? I assume you're talking about accelerated TMS and yes, I believe that was Ampa Health. So, you can check it out. Ampa Health has a website. You can also take a look at it. Lots of questions about kids. Yes, I'm still keen 100%.
43:14Okay, here's a fun one. Jacob, you're good at answering questions. How have you honed your ability to craft good answers quickly? Do you have certain framework structure for answering questions? Well, yes, I do have some heruristics that I find helpful. Generally, I approach it, and this is borrowing from Tony Robbins, who I'm sure was informed by other people, a progression, and I use this for everything, including writing, including working, hard conversations, and that is state,
43:44story, strategy. In other words, most people hop straight to the what should I do which is the strategy.
43:50But let me give you two contrasts.
43:54The first would be I am tired. I didn't sleep well. I'm feeling shitty. I haven't had coffee. Fill in the blank.
44:04That's my state. It's a negative state or a low energy state. The story then tends to be disabling. I can never this.
44:12Oh, I can't focus. I can't this. I'll never that.
44:16And from that, if you try to sit down and journal on what should I do, you're going to end up with a poor outcome.
44:21You're not going to get good answers. So in my case, let's just use your specific question. If I want to be fast in answering, I need my biochemistry to be dialed in. I need to have reliable source of fuel. I need to have stable either blood glucose or some other form of energy production. And for a podcast like this, I take exogenous ketones about 15 minutes beforehand. You have to
44:51be very careful with this stuff. It's not good to take it all the time. Every once in a while for recording, I will do that. I use delta G ketones. There are some concerns around the 13 butane dial, which is the most commonly used ketone.
45:05Let's just call it for simplicity in the commercial products. But in this particular case, the delta G has the 13 butane dial bound to BHB which is then liberated and you get some interesting effects. I do not take more than 15 grams at a time. I think it in the in this product corresponds to the milliliters. So I use the health version of Delta G. I have no affiliation with this company.
45:32And that is very helpful in the afternoon. I don't like to reup with caffeine. I also will use though, now I'm going to immediately prove myself a liar. There are I think they're called neutropics, P I C KS, that Chris Williamson manufactures, and there are these toothpicks that have 25 milligs of caffeine and it hits you immediately.
45:55Right? So, I'll take 25 milligrams, not a nitro cold brew. Let's just say 5 to 10 minutes before I sit down. and I had a meal 2 hours ago. All right. So, I've I've basically provided myself with a slow carb form of glucose supply. I'm taking the ketones on top of that. I have a small amount of caffeine. And I got a little bit of movement in earlier today for lactate, which is also something you can use as
46:24energy. It turns out that's stage one.
46:26That's the state. All right.
46:29And then for answering questions, I would say rule number one is do not rush.
46:37And as a counter example, in the podcast when I first started, I would use filler words.
46:46So, you know, buying myself time as I thought. You don't need to do that. You can just pause and you can either be silent or you can say, give me a second to think about that. That's a good question. Let me give you a good answer or try to give you a good answer. Dot dot dot. You're buying time. By the way, you may have noticed that Chat GPT and other LLMs do this. You ask your question, they're like, "That's a really smart question. I've been thinking the same thing. [ __ ] Doesn't care if it's a good question. Hasn't been
47:15thinking about it. It is buying the entire machinery time to do what it needs to do on the back end." Right? So, humans, machines, same trick. And then in my case, look, I've got copious notes, right? I I'm not doing this off the cuff. I prepared myself for your written answers or seeing I stumble too. I prepared myself for your written questions. Live stream's a different thing and I mostly
47:45lean on the biochemistry and state for that. Which film do I re rewatch the most and why? I mean, I've seen Spirited Away probably a hundred times. Snatch probably a hundred times. Babe, but the Little Pig, Masterpiece probably a hundred times. These are movies that I play on mute while I'm writing books.
48:06So, for each book, generally, I will do a lot of writing late at night, but that can feel very lonely, very isolating.
48:12So, I will throw something up on the TV, and it has to be a movie that I know inside and out so I don't get distracted. I will let it run, but mute it. That gives me people in the room.
48:23And then I will put on my headset, usually over ear. I use my Ba'is headset that's sitting somewhere around here.
48:30Expensive buggers. And I'll listen to music. Typically something without vocals like a dead mouse work more m o a r playlist, which you can find pretty easily. And then I'll rock and roll, right? And I pay attention to state there as well.
48:49That's why I've seen those movies. I loved them in the first place and then I was like, let me pick something that I will uh enjoy just having on an endless loop all night long, right? I might watch babe like for the 4-hour body, I watched babe like eight times in the evening, right? That adds up real fast.
49:07[laughter] Jonathan, I thought you looked a touch jittery. Yeah, no, I'm not jittery. I am just coming into today full of energy.
49:16I'm not shifting around too much.
49:17Although I am having a major back surgery next week, so some of that could be the pain in the low back. Nora, do you meditate? Uh, you do TM twice a twice a day for 20 minutes before meals.
49:29Great way to go about it. I do meditate.
49:33Right now I'm using the way app with Henry Shookman. I am involved in that app. I'm a small investor, but I really like a single dedicated teacher with a logical progression of skills. And I keep them short. You can make them various lengths. I do 10 minutes. I try to do it twice a day. And the twice a day really seems to be the force multiplier for many, many
50:01other benefits. And TM first demonstrated that to me. I still use TM on occasion and doing it frequently seems to matter more than doing it for a long time. And I've chatted with a few people about this.
50:20There is an argument to be made that it's having an effect on veagal tone. So it could be breath work. doesn't need to be something that involves you sitting in the half lotus or full lotus with your eyes closed focusing on a candle flame. It could be the breathing alone done twice a day. And the reason that I connected these dots, which could be speurious, maybe I'm making a mistake, is that when you do veagal nerve stimulation, you're doing it twice a day. You're doing it on the same cadence
50:49given the durability of the effect on HRV and so on.
50:53So it may not be the exact and probably isn't the exact content of the form of meditation [snorts] but something that as a cocktail affects veagal tone. Who knows? There's a lot more to it. I mean, I certainly think the explanation of skills, separating, say, the inside from the outside, using
51:22labeling, being able to observe things without trying to change them, even if your mind is going insane and your monkey mind is ricocheting around in your skull like a bullet.
51:33These are all valuable skills that you can then take outside of meditation. So, for me, using something like the way makes sense. I want skills that can be translated, not just the 12-h hour improvement in HRV. Let's just say that that is the guarantee for many many different types of what we would put into the category of meditation.
51:55But I think if you were to do box breathing, a cold bath, or something like that, which I also do, I I think you get some of the some of the same but not all the same benefits. Okay, this is a good one.
52:10It's a It's a business name, so I'm not going to read it. I apologize. But what are your thoughts on the book Healing Back Pain by John Sarno? So, I know this book very well, and I will say to kick off that I have multiple friends who were plagued by low back pain. In some cases, they couldn't walk several blocks. and they fully credit this book, Healing Back
52:36Pain, with fixing them.
52:41And that's non-trivial. That is that is legitimate.
52:47I also know acolytes of John Sarno and I know people who had rigorous debates with John Sarno directly and I've read the book. Here's my take. And for people who are not familiar, I would say that the synopsis of the book, and this is going to sound unfair, is that almost all back pain is psychosmatic and that you should
53:17go about resuming all of your old activities and its outdated belief system. And if that weren't the case, back pain wouldn't move around from location to location, etc., etc. and he'll go through the mechanical explanations for back pain, ruptured discs, bulging discs, etc., and to his satisfaction, but not mine, knock them off as irrelevant. and he'll site research and I have question marks
53:46around this research that show people with what appear to be mangled spines on MRI are asymptomatic where people with much fewer injuries let's just call them or deterioration which you would put in quotation marks like disc degeneration are symptomatic therefore and I disagree with that and I've had conversations with some of these folks who are really hardliners and sarno maximalists maybe you might Okay. And I'll just sometimes
54:15I get frustrated and I'll say, "If I took a ballpeen hammer to your L5 and just whacked on it like I was trying to chop wood, would that cause pain? Would it cause long-lasting pain?" And they have to say yes. They have to say yes.
54:32Not everything is internally generated from the mind. And I know people who have had lifechanging durable effects with interventions whether that's and there are risks with some of these interventions of course right whether that's fusion procedures like intercept or others some of it can be PT resolved
54:59depends on the nature of your low back pain what I would say is the low back and low back pain is, as far as I can tell, the Bermuda triangle of effective diagnosis.
55:14And whenever you're trying to navigate a complex medical issue like this, in contrast to something like my elbow, my elbow blew apart because I got snapped backwards in jiu-jitsu ages ago.
55:27And it turns out my extensors were just torn.
55:31This is a carpentry problem, right? Any decent surgeon can go in and piece it back together and your elbow heals. The low back is a much trickier animal.
55:44And when you go, this applies to many, many, many different medical issues. By the way, and I'm not a doctor. Don't play one on the internet. But as a lay person who's reasonably scientifically and medically literate, I'll say when you meet with specialists, they know their tool and therefore they are going to default to recommending or finding a solution within their tool. And the tricky part is that there's often at least a sliver of truth to what each of them say. So the PT will say this is a
56:14muscular problem. It's not a skeletal or nerve problem. And they will give you exercises [snorts] and some of them might help. The neurosurgeon is going to want to do what a surgeon does, right? The acupuncturist is going to want to do what an acupuncturist does. If you talk to a Hakcomi therapy practitioner or someone in psychotherapy, they're going to land on the mental or psycho emotional, they're going to want to work with that tool. And it's a case of the multiple
56:43blind men holding on to different parts of the elephant. And one says it's a snake because he's holding on to the trunk. The other one's like, "No, it's like a rat because he's holding on to the tail." One holding on to the leg says it's a tree. And that doesn't make them bad. It doesn't make them wrong. It just makes their portfolio of techniques and expertise siloed as limited. So, it's taken me [ __ ] forever to finally land on some
57:11converging diagnosis and I'm going to pursue that path. I feel very good about it. I've done six years of due diligence. For God's sake, it takes forever. And look, I'm going to be very transparent about how it turns out. But I will say that I think John Sarno's work is very valuable for a lot of people.
57:33But I take major issue with any type of largely one-sizefits-all remedy which implies that in this case there are almost no mechanical causes of pain and also on a person byperson basis. For instance, just to address the MRI argument, different people are differently
58:01sensitive. Some people have better smell. Some people are more sensitive to light.
58:06Your composition of no receptors, people can look that up. That's a fun rabbit hole. No receptors is different. So the way you feel pain can be very different from one person to the next. And how you magnify or interpret different sources of pain can be very different.
58:26how you think about it, your belief structure, what you avoid, etc. I mean, all of these constructs that you develop to cope with pain are real. That is not to dismiss the mental component.
58:43But as you've probably picked up, I think that Sarno is good at what he's good at, but he's holding on to one part of the elephant. And I think it is insulting to imply that it's all in everyone's head. [laughter] That's where I've landed. So, thanks for coming [snorts] to my TED talk on Sarno.
59:03And again, I have multiple friends who 100% credit that book with solving long-standing back pain that never recurred.
59:14So, there's something there. Stuart McIll, Back Mechanic, great book. I'm a fan. I've spent time with Stuart. He's very smart. Do I have flat feet? Yes, I do. There's all sorts of stuff going on.
59:26[laughter] Aoscu method. Yes, it helps. I do use the Agoscu method. I wrote about it.
59:32There's an entire chapter on the Agoscu method. I'll I'll spell that for people.
59:35E G O S C U E. I do exercises from the AOSCU method every night before bed so that I will have a better chance at sleeping through the night. They are very, very helpful and continue to be.
59:48And actually, this is a great segue. I'm going to go back to the written questions because one of the questions is related to the 4-hour body. This is a question from Duncan. Hi, Tim. Do you think the basic principles in the 4-hour body still apply to those over 40, over 50, etc. Specifically, I'm thinking about slow carb diet, but feel free to answer in relation to other parts of the book. Thanks for everything. Yes, 100%.
1:00:09There is very little in that book that I would rescend or revise.
1:00:15It has been shockingly stable and highly predictive. If you go back to when I wrote it 2008, 2009, it was published in 2010.
1:00:27I was using a first generation Dexcom or maybe second generation Dexcom continuous glucose monitor. I think I was one of the first non-ype 1 diabetics to use that device. And a lot of what's in that book has now become mainstream.
1:00:43The gossi method, still stand by it. The slow carb diet, 100% stand by it.
1:00:49And I still use the slow carb diet myself if I need a reboot. That is certainly one of my top picks. I will alternate sometimes with the ketogenic diet for coming back to state story strategy. Look up metabolic psychiatry or listen to my interview with Chris Palmer of Harvard for more on that. But for optimizing state, for stabilizing and maximizing energy production, in my
1:01:17particular case, I find the ketogenic intermittently to be very helpful. So my default, however, is actually a hybrid of those two, which is slow carb diet with intermittent fasting, where I am fasting for at least 16 hours and then I have an 8 hour window of eating, sometimes less. So, what that looks like on most days is I will fast up until 2 3:00 p.m. 1 2 3 p.m. and then start
1:01:46eating. And that will go for another 8 hours until I finish dinner. And by the way, you should make sure that you stop your clock when you finish eating, not when you start eating dinner. [laughter] Pro tip. And what that does over time is it in my case dramatically changes your say oral glucose tolerance test and insulin sensitivity. It is remarkable how little it takes. 4 to 6 weeks and my
1:02:12tests were completely a world apart.
1:02:16So I'm getting I'm becoming fat and keto adapted through the intermittent fasting and then I'm using slow carb diet for the rest of the time. And people can look up how to lose a 100 pounds on the slow carb diet and that'll bring up a blog post. Read it for free. It's got all you need with photos, before and after photos. It is still, for my money, the simplest, most reliable diet for recomposition and performance change
1:02:44with the highest likelihood of success.
1:02:47because the the the best diet that you follow is a lot better than the perfect diet that you quit. And I do stand by that. I'm uh in prep for surgery. I'm using AAM's protocol from that book to increase muscle mass with the expectation that I will have quite a bit of atrophy in the 4 to 6 weeks post surgery. So, I'm still using almost everything in that book.
1:03:16The one caveat is the PAG stack. This is a supplement combination. I have no stake in any of it. Could have made a lot of money if I had done it, but I didn't want people to question my motives. So, I did not launch a sports nutrition company along with the book. The PG protocol, which is polycosinol, alpha lipoic acid, green tea, decaffeinated green tea extract, and then garlic. The only question mark really that I have in that stack is polycosinol.
1:03:45I was on [snorts] the fence but slightly over the fence the time of publication.
1:03:49I'd have to go back and really look at the research that is not funded by some form of industry to fully assess that.
1:03:56But that that's really the only asterisk that I would add to that book.
1:04:01Everything else in my opinion still applies. Could be missing something, but that's where I land at the moment. Okay, here's a question from Matt. What tools and approaches besides psychedelics have you found most useful for grieving? And I pulled up a book that has helped a lot of my friends after parents have died, after spouses have died unexpectedly. And I have not personally read this book in a long time. It's been ages. I did look at it when it was first recommended to me. But
1:04:30it's called on grief and grieving, finding the meaning of grief through the five stages of loss. It's by Elizabeth Kubler Ross, David Kesler, who's the author narrator for the audio book. You can see he's the author, co-author, and so on. But on grief and grieving, you can find it very easily on Amazon. It has 4.7 stars with almost 3,500 reviews.
1:04:52That has been recommended most by people I know, love, and trust. So, I hope that is helpful, and I'm sorry for whatever you're going through. This one's from Alice. Hey, Tim. I had my first baby a year ago, and motherhood has kicked my ass. Pause. Congratulations, Alice.
1:05:12Continuing now with the question, if you were a new parent, which of your protocols would you prioritize and which would you scrap in the interest of familial, personal, and marital well-being, assuming you have limited financial resources and minimal family help? All right, there are two things that came to mind for me and this should sound somewhat familiar because it echoes my answers to the Rmiti question of What would it look
1:05:40like to invest 10 times more in the one or two levers that matter most? And if you might recall, my answers were healthfitness and relationships. So, here are a few that come to mind.
1:05:54There's an audio book called Fierce Intimacy by Terry Reel. I find Terry to be a beacon of clarity in a world of handwavy relationship advice. He's very opinionated and has a lot of experience.
1:06:10He's one of the highest paid couples therapists on the planet and you can get a lot of his greatest hits through Fierce Intimacy. There's no print version. There's no Kindle version. It was something that he recorded based on the core principles and tenets and strategies that he uses with his clients.
1:06:31And I have found that incredibly useful.
1:06:34His other books are also very very good.
1:06:37So that is one that comes to mind. You could also look at crucial conversations which I mentioned earlier, but if you had to pick one, I'd say listen to fierce intimacy. I'm guessing your time to listen is greater than your time to read text. So fierce intimacy would be one. And then from a physical fitness perspective, that's the next one. It is the great force multiplier. Not to overuse that, but I recall and I wrote about this in the introduction to the 4hour body. The first time I spent any time with Richard Branson, well before I interviewed him for the podcast, it's
1:07:07with a small group and somebody asked him, "If you could give one tip for productivity, what would it be?" And his answer was exercise.
1:07:15And he said, "By exercising every day, I give myself something like 3 to four more hours of focus productivity." Now, in your case, it's not necessarily focused productivity, but it is energy.
1:07:25So I would say from a physical fitness perspective, there are two things you can do that require very little money, no gym membership. The first I'll mention that you can check out is from Jersey and Angela Gregor. I've had Jersey J E R Z Y both from Poland who now live [clears throat] in California on the podcast. I was introduced to them by Naval Ravocant. They have a book and a program called the Happy Body and they're in their 60s. They can run up trees and grab kites. They can do things
1:07:55that most 30-year-olds cannot do.
1:07:58Jersey, I want to say he's now, he's got to be 70, 71. He can load a barbell, get on an Indo board, one of those balance boards, and do a full snatch, landing ass to heels, and stand up and repeat while maintaining his balance. I mean, it's incredible. And they do a lot of things, but they credit most of it to this daily practice of doing a sequence of exercises called the happy body. and you really basically need next to nothing. Maybe a yoga mat, couple of
1:08:27dumbbells, you're good. Shouldn't cost you more than $50 to get what you need.
1:08:32And if you can't afford dumbbells, you can find a way to hold weight, right?
1:08:35You can fill up some jugs full of water or something like that. So, the happy body. And then the second one is gymnastic strength training, GST. And you can look up Coach Chris Summer. S O MM R. He's in Tools of Titans. He has also been interviewed on the podcast.
1:08:55Hilarious salty old dog just like Jersey. Kind of specialize in interviewing these salty old dogs.
1:09:01They're such a pain in my ass, but they're so good. Love both of those guys. And both of them would laugh hearing me say that. And GST is phenomenal. It is body weight exercises in the modern sort of cool kid YouTube parlament. Some of it would be called calisthenics, but it requires very very little. You just need a floor. You can do a lot. You don't need a ton of equipment. And I have been in the best shape of my life in the last few decades
1:09:31when I was combining GST plus the happy body plus acryoga of all things. Lbasing. If you want to look up that, you can certainly, but that is a little more involved than the other two. So that's what I would say. That's what comes to mind.
