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I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
From The Tim Ferriss Show by Tim Ferriss
Hello boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types to tease out the routines, habits, and so on that you can apply to your own life. This is a special in-between-a-sode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from the last month. It features a short clip from each conversation in one place, so you can jump around, get a feel for both the episode and the guest, and then you can always dig deeper by going to one of those episodes. View this episode as a buffet to whet your appetite.
We had a lot of fun putting it together, and for the full list of the guests featured today, see the episode's description, probably right below where you press play in your podcast app. Or, as usual, you can head to tim.blog.com and find all the details there. Please enjoy.
First up, Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder and CEO of Asana and co-founder of Facebook.
How have you worked with Diana, who's great, spent a decent amount, not as much as you have, but a decent amount of time with her. She is one of a kind and very, very good at what she does. How have you worked with her, if you're open to discussing it to whatever extent, one-on-one? What does the format look like or what were you hoping to accomplish in working with her? Were you working with her mostly because you were basically test driving language and shared concepts that you
hoped to put into a sauna? Was it mostly individual in the beginning and out of personal interest?
Yeah, it's interesting. It's changed over time. I don't have a one-on-one coaching relationship with her at the moment. But a lot of it, you know, when I first started, I was a total novice on the commitments. And a lot of stories I was, I was holding tightly, and they were impacting my energy because I believe them. And she really helped me a lot with that. Part of the reason I don't work with her anymore is like, I kind of know what she's going to say every time. And so I'll do the back and forth on my
Are you open to, and if not, that's okay, and it could be a hypothetical, but sharing a story that you held tightly? Sure. And I think that would be useful.
Yeah, I mean, I think the one that has been most difficult for me, and I think is maybe universal for entrepreneurs in general, is just this sense of huge responsibility to keep going and endure and persevere and do well by your employees and this sort of thing. And it's very easy to feel like you're trapped, and that there's no other possibility. You're kind of just, you know, Sisyphus as a leader. And I don't want to scare my
employees. Like, I'm not like thinking about leaving right now. But I think going through the coaching of this really helped because she would just constantly deny me on anything that I really believed. Like, it would be terrible if Asana had a different CEO. And it's like, well, how's the opposite of that story true? Maybe a new CEO would, you know, bring in fresh perspective, and like, they'd have more energy and like, you know, things like this. Or the terrible if Asana shut down, and all of our employees wasted all this time and part of their
career doing it. And she'd say, well, how's the opposite of that story true? What about the experiences they got building Asana? What about the value your customers got while Asana was alive? And obviously, I'm still there. So it's not like this coaching led me to think I should leave Asana or shut it down. But it helped me understand that I was choosing to be there and every day is in some sense, a new decision. I can't just walk away tomorrow. Like that has other kinds of consequences that I choose not to accept. But
in the longer arc of time, I have agency here, the Asana employees have agency, our customers have agency. And it's much more productive for me to engage with the problems from above the line, rather than from this place of fear and scarcity and anxiety. And you know, there's time and place for that you also need to feel all feelings in the commitments framework. But it's bad if it's just like always a Paul on every hour of every day and every decision. And you want to not grip around those things. And so it's useful. So
sometimes to indulge in how is the story not true. And you know, with Diana, she'll go all the way to fear of death. Like, you know, imagine your own funeral, like, whatever your deepest anxiety is, and just try and loosen your grip on that.
And for people who want maybe a name for the technique, there's more to it and Diana has her own flavor and approach. But the turnarounds that are often associated with Byron Katie, people can find the work online and worksheets that are really helpful for this if you aren't able to work with someone like Diana. The 15 Commitments is also an excellent book and an excellent book not just for companies.
It's a great book if you want to improve your communication with your significant other, which is actually how I used a whole large portion of that book with significant others.
I just want to add to the other thing it's a lot like is cognitive behavioral therapy. So you know, if you want to take a more Western approach, I think it gets at the same ends with very similar methods.
Yeah, totally. One particular aspect of what Diana Chapman and Jim Detmer, who've both been on the podcast, embraced that I have always, well, this is a story, it's a part of this whole training, it's like helps you to identify the stories, but my story is that I have long struggled with having incredibly uncomfortable clearing conversations when there is a conflict or you feel
some resentment or whatever it might be. I think historically, there's been a lot of fear for me around the consequences of trying to have an open conversation about these things. My question is, how do you handle that if you implement it at Asana, those types of clearing conversations? Or broadly speaking, if this is easier, just disagreements, tension between or among employees and so on.
Yeah, it's a big company, so I don't think it happens the same way everywhere. But what I try and coach people to do and what I experience with my immediate team is that we do try and get into this mode. You know, it's a little bit conscious leadership, it's a little bit nonviolent communication, but very speaking unarguably, reflecting back with the other person said, to make sure that they feel understood. I've definitely over the years, my biggest takeaway with conflict is people want to feel heard more.
And if you're going to do some difficult change management, you just got to accept that there's going to be some of that. And it's important to do do it at the right times. Can't have everyone get involved before the decision is made. But the people who especially need to be bought in and need to help you to change management after they kind of need to be heard before it's finalized. And then even after it's communicated, you know, you're gonna have to really listen to people on why they're disappointed or unhappy, and reflect that back to the people who are disappointed.
And I think that's important to listen back to them, not just be a literal sounding board, but, you know, actually be engaged in empathetic conversation. I think that goes the longest way, and sometimes people use, you know, conscious leadership has a literal clearing script. The facts are, when this happened, I generated this story, or I had these feelings. And this is meant to explicitly get away from language, like, you did this, and that made me feel angry. You know, the whole idea with conscious leadership is you're responsible for your own feelings. And, you know, you're gonna have a reaction to some sort of
situation, and that doesn't necessarily mean the person was trying to hurt you or that that's really what happened. Often it has to do with, you know, stuff from your past, your childhood or situations like that, that you don't want to experience again, and your body is bringing them up again. And so just trying to bring some awareness to that, bring it into the room. There's two people in the conflict, and they're in different positions of power, or different positions with respect to the decision being made. But they each need to play their role in a mindful way and be as
aligned as they can and be present, and that's really what we're going for.
Next up, Daniel and David Lieberman, visionary entrepreneurs and investors, and co-founders of both Product Science and The Lieberman's Company.
Were you guys not afraid? Just for personal or family safety?
Honestly, the part of us not being afraid probably somehow was related to our dad, was never afraid of whoever was challenging him. But at the same time, back in 2000, as we finished the school, we knew that if we have all these ideas of changing the world, it's going to be impossible if we just stay home, play computer games and stuff. So we decided that we would go to some business trainings, personal development trainings, fear trainings.
We started challenging ourselves and developing ourselves and by 2005, we spent like four years developing our own internal equanimity.
So let's talk about this equanimity for a second because this is super important and It's sort of the enabler or the handicapper the lack of it being a handicapper in so many different capacities and I would say a lot of the people listening to this are gonna be from the US and Fortunately for them they've never had the experience of being under a political regime where people disappear But I've spent a lot of time in South America before poisoned or fill in the blank
Disappears in quotation marks. Yes But what you realize is there are political regimes all around the world very common where people routinely are killed poisoned or otherwise made disappear so The risks were very real for you and these are not Conspiracy theories like there are actual threats so was the lack of fear a Lack of fear of death or was it a belief that you could extricate yourself or avoid? Any type of like really significant consequence or anything else
There are three answers to that. A. Yes, we don't want to be afraid to die. Somehow don't. I mean, this is like, you die, that's it. Whatever. B. Somehow, and it actually really helped with the bandits in 2009 when they came to ask for all of their money invested in the game back. We knew that it's their way of threatening you and they want you to be afraid. They want you to fear and that's how you're on hook. As soon as you show
the fear, that's when they like hook you and you owe them forever. And we showed them that like, okay, kill us, whatever. I mean, like you will never get your money back. And the other case, like we can probably work it out somehow.
As Soon You Show The Fear We learned through this experience that actually if you don't show the fear, it's much safer than if you show it. It's a little bit like with lines. Like blood in the water.
The Tim Ferriss Show The Tim Ferriss Show
Like, anything that's like spice. Your eyes have worked for CIA.
by Tim Ferriss
You either work for CIA or you're an idiot who was convinced by CIA to fight against them and you're just like fool who like... You're a pawn. So we played the pawn card. We're like let's show ourselves as if we're stupid and we were completely transparent about all of our ideas from the very beginning saying like they will just see us as fools. Town lunatics.
Strategic
Town logistics worked at the time. It was just so rare that there was a time.
It was just so rare that they're like, oh, these guys are just crazy.
Because we made it transparently. If you're a CIA agent, you will try to hide. But if you transfer money to the biggest opposition, you probably need to...
Padding in Plain Sight
Next up, Justin Gary, CEO of Stoneblade Entertainment, creator of the award-winning Ascension Deckbuilding Game Series, and the youngest ever US National Champion of Magic the Gathering.
One of the things that I've realized is that the same way you design games, right, designing a great game and designing a great company are not all that different. In a great game, you have clear goals. You know what you're trying to do. It's very clearly defined what you're trying to do. You're getting a lot of feedback and rewards, either that be from points or achievements or from industry. You're getting constant feedback loops. The challenge level is appropriate, right? You're focused on learning one thing at a time. The skill level is appropriate where you want to be. And probably the most important thing about games, right, when we play games, we take a
certain kind of mindset. If I'm playing a game, I expect to lose, I expect to have challenges. In fact, that's the whole point, right? If you play a game and there's never a challenge, why are we even doing it? And so I have tried to cultivate all four of those things in my company. We set clear goals where it's like, okay, it's not we're going to try to have this specific metric, like our email subscriber list, we're going to try to increase it by this amount. And here's how we're going to do it over this quarter. Or we're going to try to get a new game in this category that we're going to have a prototype ready to go in two weeks, right? Clear goals. We have something that
is allows us to have daily focus and feedback. What I love is the rule of three. I think I first learned this from Chris Bailey, then his book, The Productivity Project, but I've applied it at every level of my company. So what it is is you have everybody posts their three daily goals, what are the top three things that I want to focus on? And three is really important because we all have an infinite laundry list of stuff to do. We're never going to finish our to do list. But if you can finish your most important three things, you can make an enormous amount of progress. And we scale that to every level of the company. So
every team, we have three weekly goals, we have monthly goals, we have quarterly goals. And so everything kind of scales down. And I even built this into my own like personal life. Like I have a thing, the level up journal, which I've made, which I've got, it just has a journal that just is fits in your pocket, and has three goals, three habits, and then a little gratitude practice. And so every piece of it by focusing on very few things, and making those the priority, it makes a big difference. And then lastly, with the mindset, we set very aggressive goals. And
it's okay not to hit them like a game when you you want to win, right? Every you take winning seriously, but you don't cry. And when you lose a game, right? You say, Okay, what can we learn from this? How do we get better, and started to take that attitude and approach it sometimes easier than others for sure. But like cultivating that mindset, and focusing on what's important, and making sure that the goals are clear, and everybody knows what they are, and you're moving day to day. That's how I structure the company. And it's again, it came from just the principles of design, applying them to what we do, and I found it to be really powerful.
Where do people, if people in the company are posting, for instance, the rule of three, there's three priorities for the day, where are they posting?
We have a company Discord. We have a channel in our company Discord that everybody posts their three goals for the day. There's a separate one for weekly goals, separate one for monthly goals, and a separate one for quarterly goals. And so you can always look back and see what everybody is doing at any given point if you care to at the main focus. It helps also helps us stay connected, right? Because we're 100% remote team now. So even though I may not talk to a given person or see a given person, I can quickly glance and see what's most important to them right now. So it keeps us all connected and accountable. Two quick things.
A couple of questions. The first is, is there any follow up on those three or is it just the act of someone publicly stating their priorities that makes everyone feel connected and hopefully gives them some felt sense of accountability that you think leads to better output?
Let's start there. Where were my goals for last week? Here is how they went. Here are now my goals for the next week. Or, well, you know, what can I do? You know, if I didn't meet a goal, what am I doing to fix it? So there is some accountability and I read through those every week for the team.
And that's on Friday? So people are setting their priorities for the following week on Friday? Correct.
Last but not least, Dr. Shirley Sarman, PT, PhD, Professor Emerita of Physical Therapy at Washington University School of Medicine and author of the seminal physical therapy book, Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes.
As a physical therapist, even though I got a PhD in neurobiology because I wanted to solve the motor control problems of the stroke patient, I stayed very physically active. I started really running and doing things when I started my PhD studies and after encountering this physician and learned a bit about nutrition, breaking all the family tendencies.
And then again, learning about musculoskeletal problems, even though I was really interested in working with neurological patients, people with spinal cord injury, head injury, stroke, I had always had this tendency to look at how people moved and I totally tried to figure out why they were moving the way they were moving, etc., and got involved with musculoskeletal patients and they started getting better. So I had to figure that out. And then I applied my own ideas to myself.
I don't know how folks of you want to get up, but there are really some funny stories connected with that.
Oh, let's do it. Oh, yeah. No, we love funny stories around here.
And it really related to doing this quadruped little exercise. So one sort of funny story was I was really poor going through getting my PhD because I didn't have any income and was living off of a minimum amount of money. And so I didn't get to buy new clothes very often. And I had a pair of slacks that I was wearing for a long time and a friend actually took me out to play golf. And it was an older woman at that time.
And we're out playing golf and she says, you know, Shirley, you've got your pants on backwards. And I said, you know, I'm working on my PhD. I think I ought to be able to know how to put my pants on. And so we started looking at the darts and sure enough, I had them on backwards. Well, before my alignment was such that they looked all right. But now that I was doing this quadruped exercise, they didn't look all right.
They were looking funny because I had changed the curves in my back and my buttocks. And so that's why she caught the idea that I wasn't wearing my pants right.
Which quadruped movements were these?
It's just the idea of being in quadruped and just letting your back go down and then rocking back. I tended to ride the bicycle. I was a catcher for three different softball teams, so I was really in a posterior tilt with a really flat back, and I had never really gone the other way.
And just for people who are listening, if you don't know, just to imagine, if you imagine the pelvis as a bowl of soup, posterior tilt, you're kind of pouring soup out the back of your pelvis, just for people.
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Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, got it. Okay. So...
So your whole back goes kind of flat.
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Well, I was getting my hips to bend and letting my back go down, so I was getting more of a curve, and I think also decreasing a bit of a tendency towards a thoracic hypnosis. The other thing that was really interesting, I used to bowl, you know, like with a bowling ball. And while I was in my PhD program, which took me six years, I didn't have any money to bowl. And so when I went and got my bowling ball out again, I had to change the finger grips because
I had stretched my finger flexors out. And so the finger grips no longer fit me because my fingers were longer.
So could you explain that? So your grips have been molded to fingers that were...
My fingers were always flexed from everything I did. And I never really thought about stretching them out. And so when you're in quadruped...
Oh, right. Right. Right. Okay. I see. Right. Instead of, so for people who are listening, because we're making movements with their hands and gestures with the hands, instead of being in sort of the keyboard position, we're going to make the video available as well, but some people will only hear audio. So instead of being in sort of that keyboard, you know, Hawk Talon position, when you're in quadruped, right, as if you were doing a push up, but not that push up position, if your hands are flat on the floor, then you're going to be stretching those flexors.
You end up stretching those all out. Stretching across the wrist and across the fingers, yeah.
Yeah. Got it. So you had to change your bowling ball. That's wild.
And then the other thing is I had always worn my shoes off so that they were going off to the side. And after I did this few years of this quadruped rocking, I didn't walk in the same way and I didn't have my shoes worn off to the side.
Oh, interesting. So worn off to the side, you mean the shoes on the inside were worn or on the...
Yeah, like the outside of the right and the inside of the left. So there were all these little changes that took place just from improving my alignment partly with that. So to go on to answer your full questions, so what do I do these days? Guess what? I still do quadruped. I don't go all the way back and sit on my heels. And I also want to tell you about one thing people need to know about that exercise. And then I do push-ups, modified push-ups, and then in prone. And I think that if
you could do this carefully it'd be good. In prone, I flex my knee so that my leg, as much as possible, is falling on my thigh.
You're laying down on your chest. You...
Yeah, I'm laying down face down, bend my knee, and I try to get my leg, just one knee, to fall back on my thigh because I don't want to hold it bent at 90. In other words, if you bend your knee, you can go to 90 degrees. If you go more than 90 degrees, your leg is falling on your thigh.
I see. Your lower leg is sort of falling onto your hamstring. Yes. Okay, got it. Okay. That's your thigh, yeah. Yep. And so, right, and so you're...
And so then in that position, then I lift my thigh off of the floor. I do hip extension, but not high. There's only 10 degrees of motion, but it's a way to stretch. It's a way to use your gluteal muscle because if you use your hamstring, you'll get a cramp. You'll get a bad cramp in your hamstring. CB and LS are the same. Just a little bit of hip extension to use my gluteal muscle.
How many repetitions are you doing on each side?
I just do 10 repetitions on one side and then 10 repetitions on the other.
And you're doing roughly 10 repetitions of the quadruped rocking as well. I'm not sure if that's the right term.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, and 15 pushups. 15 modified pushups. Modified is your knees are bent, I don't go to my toes.
Mm-hmm. Got it. Okay. All right.
And then still in the prone position, knees flexed to 90 degrees and then I do hip rotation in both directions, letting my lower leg come in and then go out.
Right, so just if I can translate and please correct me if I'm getting this wrong, but you're bending one, you're laying on your chest, one leg bent to 90 degrees and basically windshield wiper with that lower leg on each side.
But I do both at the same time.
Oh, you do both at the same time? Okay, I see.
Yes, so they're not quite, you know, one's maybe 80, the other maybe 70, because it doesn't take all that long. And then with my knees extended straight, with my lower extremity straight, I alternate doing hip extension, but I think about using my gluteal muscle. I think about activating my gluteus maximus. And again, only about 10 degrees of hip extension. And then in that same position, I do hip abduction. In other words, one leg out to the side 10 times.
Because you use your gluteus medius in that better if you're working against gravity and extension than you do when you're supine. Supine, you tend to recruit the tensor too much.
Oh, I see. Mm-hmm. Got it. And is there anything that follows that abductor work?
I was a person who's got a tendency towards Collapso Smasho. Just getting yourself as stretched out as possible is so important.
Mmm, yeah.
I mean, really.
Sounds like for me with my kyphosis that would also be important.
Yeah, and the biggest worry is going to be with the older person that if you have a kyphosis, you're not going to be able to get your arms on the floor all the way up over your head. And you don't know pain, you don't want any pain on top of your shoulder because that's not going to be a good plan. So they may need to have a pillow up there when they're first starting so their arms don't go all the way back because you want to avoid any kind of pain on top of your shoulder.
But happily I know how to do it and I can do it. And then I do actively hip and knee flex, bring one knee towards my chest, put it down, and the other one. And 10 times with each leg. And then with one foot on the floor, I do a straight leg raise. I don't tighten all my thigh muscles so that my knee is perfectly straight. And I turn it out a little bit so that I don't use the tensor. If I rotate it out, you'll use the psoas more. And I think about tightening my abdominals.
I have had a significant problem and I don't want to put too much stress on my lumbar spine from the iliopsoas. I want to use it but I want to protect my back. That's why I have one foot on the floor.
I see. That's why you're doing one leg at a time.
Well, yeah, it's certainly one way at a time.
Now, so could you just reiterate, so given the past lumbar issue, why you would want to engage the SOAS instead of the TFL in this case?
I mean, it's a good muscle to use. I need to be able to flex my hip. But the tensor, it has a real low threshold for activation. I mean, interestingly enough, if you would scratch the bottom of your foot, the first muscle to go off will be your tensor fasciae latae.
No kidding. Wild.
Yeah, in fact, I think it's so interesting because I've tried to contact the World Health Organization because all over the world the tensor is run amok. But they don't want to listen to me. I know, I know. It's this little bitty wimpy muscle and you say, how can it cause so much trouble? But it sure does. You know, it plays a role in what happens to the knee, plays a role in what happens to the back and the hip. I mean, it's an evil thing.
Anyway.
But you know, an interesting thing, one of my colleagues was doing a study and we actually had a student that did not have a tensor fascia lata. I mean, just, yeah, we didn't throw her out of school or anything.
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But anyway, I couldn't wait to do all the tests that we do to look for the length of the tensor. And she was a fair athlete, so it wasn't like it had been sitting not doing anything if it was there. And I did all the tests and they were negative, which was kind of supportive to me that indeed the tensor does do things that aren't so kind to the rest of the body. So anyway, all that to say that's why when I do the straight leg raise, I try to laterally rotate my hip
because I'd rather use the psoas. And it's not causing me any problems. Clearly, if I thought I was injuring myself, I would not do that. And then I do one other thing with one leg straight and the other foot on the floor so that my knee is bent, my foot's on the floor. I let my leg go out to the side, and that's my way of trying to work on controlling rotation with the trunk. My leg goes out to the side, it wants to rotate your pelvis, but contracting your
abdominals prevents that rotation. So that's another way I'm trying to work my abdominals. And then I stand up and I'm so proud of myself because I can get up from the floor without any difficulty. And many people at my age or many years younger than that can't do that. And put my back to the wall and then do what I was telling you to do, arms up overhead and do the little side bend thing.
And you do this every day?
I do. I walk three to four miles a day. Sometimes ride a stationary bike.
Mm-hmm. Well, these are things I'm paying more and more attention to. I'm so impressed.
But let me tell you one thing now, Tim, that the quadruped as much as I love it, and I think it's important whether you have a shoulder problem, a cervical problem, etc., is that one of the things that's a problem though is, and it can be for several reasons, but again, the tensor is one of them. If you rock back and your hip immediately rotates, in other words, I've found this in some patients that as you rock back, your hips should just flex.
And during the femur, you can sometimes see that it immediately rotates. That is really bad. And the reason why it's really bad is because it's rotating in your knee joint too, and that's a good way to set yourself up for an ACL tear, anterior cruciate ligament. And I think people should be monitoring that, anybody that's doing that.
One of the things that helps is if you slightly laterally rotate your hips. You know, many people, particularly men, come with what we call femoral retroversion. Do you know what that is?
I don't.
You probably have a femoral retroversion. It's a structural variation. And so the femur, as you know, has a head and neck on it. It's angled. Well, it's also rotated on the shaft. And in the ideal world, the average, not the normal, the average is that that rotation is 15 degrees. So the head and neck of the femur are pointing 15 degrees forward. Now many men, it's not rotated. So what it means is that when you're doing your hip rotation, you go out a long ways.
That's true for me, for sure. My internal rotation is terrible compared to my external rotation.
Well, but that's because you came that way and it should never change. No, I mean it. And men need to know that. In fact, that's a problem because if your tensor is really developed, you could be sitting in hip medial rotation when you shouldn't be. And if your glutes are really good, that'll also medially rotate your hip when you're sitting. That's a problem. But one of the ways to, if you're trying to do the quadruped thing,
Turn your hip out a little bit when you're in the quadruped position so your feet would come together a little bit closer.
Right, more of like a wrestling partier position.
Yeah, I don't know. I've never read it. Not with a referee anyway.
Okay, so from the feet to the knees it would just be making a very, very, very slight V-shape. It's not a V-shape. The lines would converge, in other words, right?
Yeah, your feet would be a little bit closer together. Yeah, exactly.
You're funny. All right, so that makes a lot of sense to me. And I'm certainly comfortable with that. What would it mean or how would you read the movement pattern that I have of sitting and having my legs sort of splay open? That's also something that alleviates my low back symptoms. If I'm sitting in a chair, oftentimes I'll take my shoes off and
fold them up on top of the chair. Restaurants hate this, by the way. So I do get chastised occasionally, but it alleviates some of my lower back issues.
Yeah, you're getting it fore and aft because you're probably in this one of the syndromes I have of the hip that I've described to the hip because if your tensors really develop it's going to be holding your femur in medial rotation when you're standing because it's pull taught then. If your gluteals are really well developed, when your hips flexed to 90 degrees they become medial rotators too. So they're trying to hold your hip in medial rotation and you're probably getting that twist on your back. So when you laterally rotate, you're going to have a lot of tension.
If you're going to rotate your hips, then you're taking that pull off of them.
Taking the Pressure off of it.
Yeah, you're not getting that extra pull on your pelvis from those gluteal muscles being pulled so tight. And that's where you should be. That's your normal thing because you have femoral retroversion. And that's one of the things that's bad is because, you know, like when people go in and they're deadlifts and they say, well, make your feet point straight ahead. Well, many men in particular shouldn't have their feet pointing straight ahead because
they have this femoral retroversion. And also when they do things that rotate, like play golf, their feet should be turned out because if they're straight ahead, they're at the end of their medial rotation range. So then it'll be the knee or the back or the hips that are going to go. It's also interesting. It's like the back is attached, the backbone is attached to the pelvic
bone. And I think to me, that's what's so valuable about being a physical therapist or looking at people because I can't, like an orthopedic surgeon, just look at the knee or I can't just look at the hip because it's the result of all of these interactions of the body. That's what's so important.
It's also interesting.
And now, here are the bios for all the guests. My guest today is Dustin Moskovitz. You can find him on Twitter, at Moskov. Dustin is co-founder and CEO at Asana, a leading work management platform for teams. Asana's mission is to help humanity thrive by enabling all teams to work together effortlessly. Prior to Asana, he co-founded Facebook and was a key leader within the technical staff, first in the position of CTO and then later as VP of Engineering.
Dustin attended Harvard University as an economics major for two years before moving to Palo Alto, California to work full-time at Facebook. And there is a lot more to his bio. We do explore a lot in this conversation, but before I get to that, you can find Asana at Asana.com. And as mentioned before, you can find Dustin on Twitter, at Moskov.
And before we jump on, we dive into energy management. We talk about coaching and really performing for endurance. We talk about No Teaming Wednesdays as part of energy management, understanding the real risks of AI, the real perhaps existential risks of AI and its counterpart, which is embracing the benefits the frictionless work that might be possible
AI current integrations, what that looks like, the value of holding stories loosely, how to communicate and resolve conflict more effectively, the 15 commitments of conscious leadership. We get into a lot in this conversation. We also talk about self-care, physical and otherwise, we touch upon pretty much every facet of work life balance and work life performance.
In addition to all of that, we've added a number of resources to the show notes, which you can find a Tim.blog slash podcast, including Dustin's book recommendations and time budget template. This is a spreadsheet that you can use yourself. And I don't believe he has shared these things publicly before. In this episode, I have brothers David Lieberman and Daniel Lieberman.
They're both entrepreneurs and investors, one-of-a-kind entrepreneurs and investors, with a close partnership spanning 16 years. They gained valuable experience at Snap, contributing to projects involving avatars, bitmoji, animation, and product operations. They're currently based in LA, where their primary focus is on building product science, a service dedicated to optimizing mobile apps.
I'm going to pause here and just say there's a lot more to this story and this conversation than the bio I am reading. We get into crossbows, we get into Russian mobsters, we get into some of the craziest stories, honestly, I think I have ever heard. So take everything I'm saying as just a preview of one dimension of 17 dimensions that we will share.
Moving on, the Lieberman brothers have established the Lieberman's company, referred to as a people company, through their commitment to the Founders' Pledge. They've allocated all future earnings and economic value for the next three decades to Lieberman's Co., including Founders' shares of product science and potential returns from future investments. Some of you may recognize the Lieberman brothers from a fascinating profile in The New Yorker on selling shares in yourself.
What might that look like? What can that look like? What might it look like to invest in other people for their future earnings, etc. They have a lot of wild ideas, a lot of great ideas, and you can find them online at liebermans.co. That's spelled L-I-B-E-R-M-A-N-S, liebermans.co. You can find them on Instagram at liebermans, so L-I-B-E-R-M-A-N-S.
And there's a lot in the show notes. There's going to be a lot in the show notes here, so be sure to check out the links after the episode at tim.blog slash podcast.
My guest today was a blast. We cover a lot that can be applied to life, business, thinking, game design, and a hundred other things. A lot of tactical advice, a lot of specifics. My guest is Justin Gary. Justin is an award-winning designer, author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He is CEO of Stoneblade Entertainment and creator of the innovative and award-winning Ascension Deck Building game series. Prior to designing games, Justin was the youngest ever
Magic the Gathering US National Champion. He has studied creativity and applied the principles of design to create dozens of products over his 20 years in the industry for brands that include Marvel, World of Warcraft, and the Wharton School of Business. Today he designs, consults, and teaches creativity around the world as a digital nomad, and there is a lot in between. We get into the weeds in the best way possible in this interview, cover a lot of ground, a lot of varied ground, so I hope and think you will enjoy it. You can find Justin online and many more at the website.
Thinklikeagamedesigner.com is one such place, and I highly recommend the podcast by the same name. On Twitter, at Justin underscore Gary, and we will link to everything else, LinkedIn, Stoneblade, and much more in the show notes at Tim Dot Blog slash Podcast.
My guest today is Shirley A. Sarman, PT-PhD. But before we get to her bio, let me just explain. Shirley is a legend in the physical therapy world. She has influenced some of the top performance coaches in the world. She's also 85 years old, going on 86, and is not only razor sharp mentally, but in excellent shape physically. So she walks the walk. So let me get to the bio. And I'll also give you a bit of
101 on some of the terms that we'll use in the conversation. Shirley A. Sarman, PT-PhD, is Professor Emerita of Physical Therapy at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. She received her bachelor's degree in physical therapy and her master's and doctorate degrees in neurobiology from Washington University, where she joined the physical therapy faculty and became the first director of their PhD program in movement science. Shirley, and she asked me to call her Shirley, became a Catherine Worthingham Fellow of the American Physical
Therapy Association in 1986, and in 1998 was selected to receive the Mary McMillan Award, the association's highest honor. She has also received Washington University's Distinguished Faculty Award, the Distinguished Alumni Award, the School of Medicine's Inaugural Distinguished Clinician Award, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Indianapolis. She has received as well the Bowling-Erdhardt Orthopedic Clinical Practice Award from the Orthopedic Academy of the APTA. She has served on the
APTA Board of Directors and as President of the Missouri Chapter. Her books are iconic. They have been the initial domino that has toppled over, so to speak, the enthusiasm, the ignition for many people to get into the field of movement science and physical therapy and performance coaching. Her first book, Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndrome, you may have heard Eric Cressy mention this. It was a hugely influential book for him.
It has been translated into seven languages. Her second book, Movement System Impairment Syndrome of the Cervical and Thoracic Spines and the Extremities, has been equally influential in promoting movement diagnoses. In this episode, we do a deep dive on low back pain. That is something that for the first time really I have been struggling with for the last, let's just call it nine months or so. It could be a bit longer. We do get into the weeds with regard to anatomy, particularly as it relates to the back stuff that I mentioned.
I'd like to go over a few terms before we start the interview so you don't have to wonder what they are and feel like you need to pause to look them up. You can get through the interview without listening to my definitions, but some of them might be helpful. Also, if you're a kinesiologist or professional, please excuse these very simplistic and possibly slightly off definitions, but they'll help a lot of people.
So the first one is the iliac crest. What is that? That's the uppermost border of your pelvic girdle. So you can think of the pelvic girdle as that large bony ball that you see in the middle of a skeleton hanging in a science classroom or something. You can feel your iliac crest if you press your thumb into the top of your hip. That sort of bony ridge is your iliac crest.
The tensor fascia latte, and I've heard many different pronunciations of this, and the fact of the matter is no one really speaks Latin correctly because we don't know if it was, you know, veni, vedi, vici, or veni, vedi, vici for those who get that reference. I came, I saw, I conquered.
So anyway, it is better known and abbreviated as the TFL for a lot of people. So the TFL is a muscle at the outside, very outside portion of the thigh at the very top. So you can think of it also, people think of it as a hip muscle sometimes. You use it to balance your pelvis when standing, walking, or running. If you ever give someone a piggyback ride and a muscle gets super sore on the side of your hip, that is probably at least including the TFL.
You also use the TFL for abducting your hip or pulling it away from the midline of your body compared to adducting with two D's, which would be pulling it toward the midline. One way that I remember that, abduction, it's like an alien abduction taking you away. So moving the, say, leg away from the body, abducting, bringing the thigh in, adduction, so like an adductor machine at a gym, one of those Susan Summers, Thigh Master type machines would be that.
We also talk about muscles that assist in lateral rotation. Lateral rotation is rotating away from the center of the body, medial rotation is rotating towards the center. So imagine if you turned your feet outwards to look like you were duck footed, that would be lateral rotation out to the sides. And then if you turn them inward to be pigeon toed, that would be medial rotation of both femurs inward.
Alright, psoas major, I also mentioned psoas major, that's spelled P-S-O-A-S major, that is a large muscle that joins the upper and lower parts of the body. And it also contributes to a lot of lower back pain, it connects to the inside of the lower back.
And if you were to take, say, your four fingers and move them four inches to either side of your navel and then press in, say, four inches, that would probably touch your psoas major, which is why massage therapy that addresses it can be so uncomfortable. For you chefs out there, or hunters, or people who might recognize this, this would be the equivalent of your tenderloin.
So if you're wondering what a tenderloin is, it is this muscle in many animals. There may be other ways to use that butchering term, but psoas major, tenderloin, there you have it, used mostly for posture and so on. We also get into stenosis as it relates to my spine. So stenosis is an abnormal narrowing, and I have some stenosis around L4, L5, which is in the lumbar spine or lower spine, which puts pressure on some nerves there and causes all sorts of pain.
The thoracic spine is more of, say, the middle of the back, and you just think between the shoulder blades for simplicity. Okay, last, and I could say not least, but who knows, these are all kind of equivalent and useful. You have supine versus prone positions.
Supine is lying on your back, prone is lying on your stomach. If you've ever wondered what a supinated grip is, or a pronated grip, supinated is palm up, and you can remember that because if you want to pour soup into your hand, you have your palm up.
Okay, so that is supine. And honestly, learning the basics of anatomy and the basics of some medical terminology is, I think, one of the best, absolute best investments you can make in your health, because then you can talk the talk with professionals, and they take you more seriously, they give you better advice, they give you the straight scoop. So this is all a very good investment of time. You can find a glossary of these terms and more in the show notes for this episode of Tim.blog.
And I do want to mention one other thing. If you want an incredible rotating view of different muscles, like the QL, we talk about the quadratus lumborum, that's sort of this squarish, rectangular muscle in the lower back area that is sort of the grand central station of all sorts of things.
If you want to see anything, the psoas major, check out the Essential Anatomy 5 app for iOS and Android. And you can see all of this. You can also see the circulatory system and all sorts of other things. It's a great app, really enjoyed it. And there are short YouTube tutorials that I recommend taking a look at if you end up downloading it. And that was referred to me by professional drummer Dave Elitch, who helps people improve their mechanics, technique, and much more.
And there you have it. So if you want a video to go with this, I did record a video of this conversation and I get up and walk around and she does an assessment with me live. You can go to my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Tim Ferriss tours to us, and that will have some helpful graphics and so on overlaid into the video.
Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is 5 Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called 5 Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.
It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you.
So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.