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Check it out. Hello, you sexy people out there. This is Tim Ferriss. And this episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast has a very special guest, Josh Waitzkin, whom I met in 2007 after reading his spectacular book, The Art of Learning. Josh, you may know from Searching for Bobby Fischer. He was the subject of both the book
end the movie. He's thought of as a chess prodigy. Although that term prodigy, I don't believe applies to him well at all because he has a method for learning, mastering, refining any skill, whether that is chess, whether that is Tai Chi, in which he is... multiple-time world champion, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, in which he's a black belt under the phenom, the Michael Jordan of the sport.
Marcelo Garcia, and he's worked with people ranging from Mark Messier, six-time Stanley Cup winner, to Cal Ripken Jr., to the top hedge fund managers in the world. He is a performance specialist and also a very dear friend of mine now at this point. And I ended up loving his book, The Art of Learning, so much that I acquired the rights to his audiobook.
If you want to find that, it's read by Josh himself. And you can just go to four-hour blog, F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R-B-L-O-G.com and search for Tim Ferriss Book Club or go to Google and do the same. So without further ado, let's get straight to the meat. of the interview. I hope you enjoy it. I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue of a metal endoskeleton.
So Josh, I figure we might as well start at the top and do a little retrospective. What led you initially to write The Art of Learning? Of course, that's how I was in many ways introduced. to your work and then through our mutual friend, Max ended up connecting. But what was the reason you decided to write that book? I initially started thinking about the idea of the book about two years into my martial arts life.
So I transitioned from chess into studying, into meditating, into studying East Asian philosophy. Then I started getting into Tai Chi Chuan and ultimately into the martial application of it, push-ins. And I started to experience this very interesting... transition from the principles, my level in chess just began to translate directly over into the martial arts. And I think it was primarily one experience I had.
Something around two years into my tattoo training, I was giving a simultaneous chest exhibition in Memphis, Tennessee at a fundraiser for muscular dystrophy. And I was playing 45 or 50 boards at once. So I'm walking down the middle of this big square of chess tables. Everyone's playing one game. I'm playing each of them. And about 40 minutes into the simul, I had this experience that was so interesting. I began to feel like I was...
riding the energetic wave of the game like I was in my push-hands training. I wasn't playing chess. I wasn't thinking in chess language. I wasn't calculating variations. I was feeling the flow, feeling the space behind like I would in the martial arts. And I had this realization, you know, I was playing beautiful chess, but I wasn't consciously playing chess, that the barriers between these two different... are to dissolve in my mind. And that's when I started to conceive of the idea.
of the book. And a lot of the process of, I spent five years taking notes, maybe 400 or 500 pages of notes in the book before I actually sat down and wrote it. And a lot of that process was deconstructing what I'd been doing rather intuitively.
So essentially what it felt like was translation of parallel learning. These are two rather abstract terms. That's the language that I was using internally when I was first thinking about the book because it felt like I was just taking the essence of one art and translating it over into another. And the process of writing it involved deconstructing what I'd been doing somewhat abstractly into something that could be replicated more systematically.
So the question that jumps out in my mind, which is a bit of a side note perhaps, but is... Simuls, playing 10, 20, 30, 40 boards simultaneously. I'll try to ask a better question than how does someone do that, but at what point...
What happens to a chess player when they go from an inability to play multiple boards simultaneously to being able to play multiple boards simultaneously? What is the sort of framework or thinking or... experience that someone built up that allows them to do something like that, which to the average person seems like a Rain Man-like feat.
You know, I think it's different for every chess player. I mean, one of the beautiful things about chess is that you can approach it so many different ways. And to be world-class, what you need to do essentially, is express the core of your being through the art. I think this is true of many arts, and that's probably something we'll get into more deeply. So you can have a very mathematical person who plays chess mathematically. You can have a very musical person who plays chess musically.
Someone might be much more kinesthetic like myself and sort of a feeling for flow and hidden harmonies and almost a physically energetic relationship to chess. When I first learned to play chess, When I was six years old in Washington Square Park, it was a battle. I love the feeling of just going. into a fight with someone and finding these hidden harmonies and finding where these animal passions mixed with this technical complexity. And much later, when I got much better,
playing simuls, it was sort of a higher level manifestation of that same kind of dynamic. I mean, for me, playing simuls It's something akin to juggling a lot of balls. I wasn't playing 40 different games, for example, separately. The flow of all 40 games would... sort of coalesce into one larger sense of flow. And it was actually really interesting. Whenever, often when I'd give a simul and there'd be a youth competition and the winners of the youth competition would play against
And so sometimes kids would cheat. They'd really want to beat me, so they would cheat. So I'd be walking around this big thing, and then I'd get to the table, and they'd have shifted the position to try to win, because if they could win, it would be a big thing.
And my experience when that happened was as if you had, imagine you had like 40 balls up in the air and suddenly they would all crash onto the floor. And I would know that they would change the position, not by reaching the board and remembering what the position was and then... seeing they changed it, it would initially be this feeling of the energetic flow had been interrupted. And then I'd have to reverse engineer myself back to that one.
one game, that one component of the flow, and then I'd remember the game, and then I would remember exactly what the position had been, and then I'd say, ha-ha, this was the position. And then it would take me two or three times going back around to get all the balls back up in the air to get back to the energetic flow. So actually...
For me, giving simuls sort of felt similar to playing chess, one chess game. But that was my own relationship to it. I think that probably if you ask 10 different very strong chess players, that all give somewhat different answers. Got it. Yeah, one thing that blew me away was spending time with a friend of yours, Maurice.
When we went to Washington Square Park and seeing him play a game, at least for the first portion, without looking at the board. And I won't give away too much of the punchline since we... We captured it all in a film. It was pretty amazing. But just his ability to track the board.
It seemed like by chunking portions of the board into sort of larger gestalt pieces, I don't know if that's the best way to express it, but it seemed like his ability to... seemingly remember all these disparate pieces was because he had it. broken, the board broken down into sort of component chunks, as it were. But I don't want to take us too down that fine line. Let's shift gears. What I'd be very curious to know is...
At this point, because I know, of course, a little bit of the background, but I want to dig into the details. What type of people do you personally work with? These days and why do they work with you? What type of things do you do with them? Well, I have three major dimensions to my... creative life right now. Well, maybe four. I guess the most important one is my son, Jack, who
He's a little over two years old and the love of my life, so that's maybe the most important part of my life, no question about it. I run a nonprofit educational foundation, and we have a one called the JW Foundation, the Art of Learning Project. a couple hundred programs in schools around the country internationally as well. And so this is integrating these principles that have been developing in schools, working with teachers, parents.
and children around this individualized and thematic relationship to learning that I've been developing. So this is one dimension. The other one is I own a martial arts school, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu school, with Marcelo Garcia, who's a nine-time world champion. You know him well, Tim.
He's really the Michael Jordan of the grappling world. So this is world-class athletes training there. And then I run a consulting business where I'm training people who are at the cutting edge of the finance world. And this is really interesting work because we're focusing on that last year.
one or 0.1% of the learning process, which is really my specialty. It's, it's highly individualized. It's cutting edge work on their learning process, their idea generation, their creativity, their performance ecology, their resilience. Um,
fascinating work. And what I've discovered, it's interesting because I wrote this book called The Art of Learning years ago. And so people are always coming to me to speak about learning, but much of what I've been focused on in recent years has been unlearned.
When I think about that last movement, you know, from the equivalent of being, say, number 10 to number one in the world, to number five to being number one in the world, it's much more about finding subtle obstructions, finding friction points, releasing them. identifying cognitive biases and blocking your way. It's the movement towards unobstructed self-expression. So if you think about
about your creative process is a hose with a big crimp in it. If you release it, just unbelievable pressure can be released. And a lot of what I'm doing with people is trying to move them from very good to great or from great to truly elite. But just deeply individualized work on helping them really...
find ways to express the core of their being through their art, which is, as you know, a big theme in my life from when I played chess at my highest level. That's what I was doing when I had a period of being really locked up. In my chess career, which we can go into in more detail if you want, I was doing the opposite. I was trying to fit into someone else's mold. And then ultimately when I transitioned away from chess into the martial arts,
I returned to that experience of self-expression. And that's when I really started to understand it very deeply. I think it was the crisis towards the end of my chess career which really... literally the foundation for the work that I do today with brilliant mental performers who are just trying to make that movement to the equivalent to world champion. To jump actually back to Marcelo for a second, because I've of course met Marcelo and he's just...
And you've gone to war with him and I've watched you. I've gone to war with him, which I, if there's anything at stake, I don't recommend. He's a tough guy. He's caused me a lot of pain over the years. He's a tough guy, but also a sweetheart of a guy. He's so fluid. What I'd love to hear from you, of course, because in The Art of Learning, which some people might be familiar with, they read about your experiences in chess, your experiences in Tai Chi, the parallels between them.
and this sort of overarching framework for optimizing mental and physical performance, if that's a fair way to put it. which is the art of learning, these different techniques and strategies. What have you learned?
through this third art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu? What are some insights or... strategies that you've had since moving from Tai Chi, which is in some ways similar, but also very different from Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which a lot of people would be familiar with through the UFC and mixed martial arts.
Right, right. Yeah, I mean, to put it in context relative to my life, so the Art of Learning ends with the 2004 World Championship. It ends with me describing the narrative of that. It was just absolutely horror and crazy experience. I won't give the punchline, but it was really intense. And after this, I decided I wanted to be a beginner again, to put on a white belt, literally and figuratively.
took on this third major mountain in my life, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I was training out on the West Coast for about a year when I was actually writing The Art of Learning. I was training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu twice a day.
This was after I'd spent five years taking notes. Then I had the 2004 Worlds, then I was writing it. I started training with John Machado out there. Then I came back to New York. I started training with Marco Santos here, and I started to develop this relationship with Marcelo, who is just... The greatest grappler to ever live. And we were doing a lot of private lessons. We developed a friendship. Then he moved to Florida, and I would travel to Florida to work with him.
And ultimately, I made the decision I wanted to bring him to New York, mostly because I was at that point planning to make a run for the world championship in this art. and there was no better way to do it than to get my ass kicked by the very best to ever live in the sport. He's just a wonderful guy, and he's just an unbelievable martial artist.
And so we opened up the school together, and I've been on the mats with him, you know, other than when one of us has been injured, and there's been a lot of injuries in these sports just all the time. And it's been a fascinating experience. I mean, Marcelo is so profoundly different from me. I'm a really conceptual guy. I think abstractly, of course, my foundation in chess. Marcelo is one of the most, well, he's the most kinesthetically overdeveloped person I've ever met.
And, of course, overdevelopment and underdevelopment tend to come hand-in-hand conceptually. So can you give me an example of that? What would be an example? Of overdevelopment, underdevelopment? Of kinesthetic, what it means to be kinesthetically. His physical intelligence is mind-boggling. I mean, when he'd come fishing with me, you throw him on a stand-up paddleboard in a three-foot shop, and everyone just flies off of paddleboards when they just stand up on them.
Beautiful. I mean, you just find the balance points. I've never seen someone learn so quickly how to handle waves, boats, handling fishing lines, being, you know, freediving, riding waves on paddle boards. I've been a stand-up fighter for many years. Throwing is my core art. When I'm doing stand-up training with Marcelo, I caught him with
One time. I don't think I've ever caught him with a throw twice. Wow. Which is amazing. And I have guys who were world class who I was training with. I catch them thousands of times. This is a guy. You almost never see Marcelo get caught more than once with something.
And it's amazing to see how he relates to the world through his kinesthetic intelligence. So, for example, if you're looking, when we were looking for spaces for our school, we'd walk into a big room and I'd be thinking about the dimensions, you know. square footage where this would be, where that would be. Marcelo would know if it felt good or felt bad. If he meets you, he's going to know whether he feels good about you or he feels bad about you. And his intuition is incredibly...
dead on, but he navigates the world through this kinesthetic intelligence. And it's been really fascinating having a school with him and diving deep with him. because we've been having conceptual dialogue for these three and a half years or so, and he's really deepened conceptually. I've learned even more deeply the importance of the lesson that there are many paths to greatness. And to take a guy like Marcelo and to try to fit him into a chess player is hyper-conceptual.
mold would be terrible because you'd be killing his shine. And he is so great because of his just... unbelievable commitment to doing it his way. And he's done things in extraordinary ways. I mean, for example, you know how in these competitive arts, everyone's very secret about their repertoires. We have this program, which you know well, called MGM Action, where people...
Jiu-Jitsu guys from around the world log in to watch all of Marcelo's training sessions, his sparring sessions, his lessons, everything. When he was competing in Abu Dhabi, Submission Grappling World Championship, and Munjals, which is the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Championship, we were...
streaming his sparring sessions every night. So he was basically showing his competitors what he was about to use against that in two weeks and three weeks and four weeks. And his attitude about this, which is completely unique. is if you're studying my game, you're entering my game, and I'll be better at it. So simple, so pure. And if you think about it, it's really deep. The opposite of what most chess players would do and most jiu-jitsu guys would do. And so he's wide open to...
Constant learning. And the other beautiful thing about Marcelo is, you know, people call him the king of scrambles. And if you watch his training style, he's always in transition, which is a really interesting idea to think about in a cross-disciplinary manner. Because most people get their egos involved in their training and they're trying to dominate all the time. And to dominate in almost anything, you find a position of dominance and you keep it.
But Marcelo always lets his opponents move, and so he's constantly playing in transition. And so if you think about what world-class martial arts And you brought up, for example, Maurice Ashley playing chess in Washington Square. It's similar. If you're at a much higher level than someone, you can always seem mystical because you're doing things which are outside of their conceptual scheme, the way that operates in the martial arts.
is if you think about it through the lens of frames, right? If you and I are looking at a position and in your mind there's this position leads to this position leads to this position. So there's three positions. In my mind, if I'm constantly training at the transitions between these positions, these actually expand and these transitional frames become...
positions to me. And so if I'm seeing 100 positions when you're seeing, say, two, then I can play in your blind spots and it can seem mystical to you because you haven't trained there. And that's what Marcelo does. By spending all of his time in transition, he's cultivated the art to play in the in-between, which is really what Level is all about. or one of the core things that highlight that world-class martial arts is all about, playing in transition, in gaps in your opponent's sight patterns.
Oh, no, I mean, observing and practicing with Marcelo, say, on the guillotine or the Marcelo team just blew me away because if you look at it... As an uninformed spectator, or even just a moderately informed spectator, you're blown away by how fast he is, how effective he is, but the nuance of... movement, allowing space to open manufacturing space by say, applying pressure and then leaving it.
is so subtle and so incredibly effective. I mean, then you start to notice it from these principles that carry over to many, many hundreds of possible positions, let's just say. It's really amazing. It reminds me of something I heard once from a musician, which was, I don't know who the original quote is from, but he said that music is the space between the notes. And I was like, huh, that's a really interesting way to look at it. But what were you going to say?
I was going to say, I think that's just a gorgeous quote. I think that most great arts are defined by that space in between. Yeah, well, it's like writing is the same way, right? It's like, you know, when in doubt, leave it out. It's just like, you know, it's, I think, yeah. Beautiful, beautiful point. And, of course, the thing about Marcelo,
is that it can often seem initially that he's moving so fast. But what's incredible is that he can also move very slow and do things that you don't see. Just like a great side of hand artist who's just practicing the art of illusion when we're not practicing it.
It's amazing what can be done with intention, with controlling someone's intention. And this is a lot of my training and push-ins related to finding ways to essentially... control someone's intention so that you were ahead of them, even if they were ultimately moving first. You were there before they arrived. It's a fascinating psychological component of really high-level training in anything. Well, I remember an interview, or it wasn't an interview. No, it was an interview, actually, with...
one of the top K1 fighters back in the day. And they were talking about Peter Ertz. I don't know if you remember the Dutch lumberjack. Huge guy. And he seemed fast. And I remember... And what people said, a number of opponents said, you know, he's actually not that fast. He's kind of a big lumbering guy. He's so good at predicting timing that...
He sees you telegraph before you even have the thought to throw the punch, and he beats you to the punch as a result of that, but it's because he picks up on the cues faster than other people, and I thought that was very interesting. To try to bridge this to something else, I mean, you work with, of course, I'm not going to mention names, but you work with some of the most.
stunningly successful and famous traders and people in finance. I mean, some real kind of masters of the universe type folks. What have you found unique about that group of people. Let's just start with that. I'm curious to know kind of what you've noticed being as observant as you are about that group of folks.
Oh, that's a big question. It is a big question. Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, I think a core principle to start with is that there are many paths to greatness. I mean, each one of these guys who's really world-class is doing it his way. And he's harnessing his eccentricities. He's cultivating his or her strengths as a way of life. There's not an excessive focus on weakness. There's just an embracing of...
deep, deep study of the preconditions to someone's finest moments of expression and building lifestyles around it. And that's a lot of what I do is help people understand what makes them tick on a very, very deep level relative to...
You know, the cognitive biases, where they're locked up, and where the greatest has come. What kind of external conditions, what kind of internal conditions. And the ones who are really at the top are people who... who have mastered this art of deep introspection and taking the result of these introspective processes and turning them into training systems and into a way of life. And it's fascinating how the process works. What I do with these guys is I...
After I do my initial diagnostic process, I have ways of revamping the daily architecture, the way they live their life, so that they're, for example, aligning their peak energy periods with their peak creativity work. building lifestyles that are just relentlessly proactive as opposed to reacting to inputs. They're building a daily architecture which is based on
maximizing the creative process. If you think about this relative to most people, a simple case in point is email checking. Most people, when they finish a break, Even top guys in industries, when they finish a break, whether they wake up first thing in the morning, what do most people do? They check their email. When they come back from a workout, whether they check their email.
When, you know, they come back from lunch with you, they check their email. And so what you see is this, whenever they're coming back, from something after a break, they're soaking in inputs. And so they live this reactive lifestyle. Their creative process is dominated by external noise as opposed to internal music. And a lot of what I work on with guys is creating rhythms in their life that... really are based on feeding the unconscious mind, which is the wellspring of creativity, information.
and then tapping it. So, for example, ending the workday with high-quality focus on a certain nerve complexity where you could use an insight, and then waking up first thing in the morning pre-input. and applying your mind to it, journaling on it. Not so much to do a big brainstorm, but to tap what you've been working on unconsciously overnight.
which, of course, is a principle that Hemingway wrote about when he spoke about the two core principles in his creative writing process were, one, ending the workday with something left to write. Yep.
Right. So not doing everything he had to do, which most people do, but they feel the sense of guilt if they're not working. You and I have discussed this at length. But leaving something left to right and then waking up. And then the second principle, release your mind from it. Don't think about it all night. Really let go.
have a glass of wine, then wake up first thing in the morning and reapply your mind to it. And it's amazing because you're basically feeding the mind complexity and then tapping that complexity or tapping what you've done with it. And I mean, this rhythm. you know, the large variation of it is overnight, then you can do microbursts of it throughout the day before workouts, pose a question, do a workout.
release your mind after a workout, return to it, and do a creative burst before you go to the bathroom, before you go to lunch, before anything. And there's ways of systematically training yourself to generate the crystallization experience, the aha moment that can happen once a month or once a year. A lot of what I do is work on systems to help it happen.
once a day or four times a day. And when you're talking about guys who run financial groups of $20 to $30 billion, for example, if they have a huge insight, that can have unbelievable value. And so if you can really train people to get systematic about nurturing their creative process, it's unbelievable what can happen. And most of that works. relates to getting out of your own way at a very high level. It's unlearning. It's the constant practice of subtraction, reducing friction.
What would be an example, you've mentioned cognitive biases a few times. For those people who may not be familiar with that term, what would be an example of cognitive biases and how someone might work on them? Well, there are a lot of cognitive biases that are specific to certain disciplines like chess or finance or philosophy. But if we just think about it in terms of everyday life, let's say we make a decision.
then feel the need to justify that decision. And so we make more decisions to justify that initial decision. And then we basically get ourselves into this deep wormhole, which is caused by the attempt to justify the sunk cost fallacy.
Exactly. So this is in the financial group or in the world of cognitive biases, some cost policy, right? But this is very interesting. For example, a chess player who makes a certain decision and there's a certain... emotional and intellectual and time component to the value we put into the thought process behind that decision. and what we often have to do is release it because the,
the position changes shape. A very interesting way that this manifests in chess, which you can think about rather universally. is let's say that there's a certain evaluation to the position, right? You and I are playing Tim, and I have a slight advantage in the position, and I'm nurturing that advantage. I'm nurturing it, I'm nurturing it. In a lot of complexity, I make a slight error, and suddenly the position is equalized, right?
So if I'm holding on to the past evaluation emotionally where I have the advantage, then what I'm going to do very subtly is I'm going to reject positions that don't give me that advantage. But if objectively I no longer have an advantage, then I'm going to be...
And then I'm going to be rejecting things I should accept, which will make my position slip more and more and more, and you fall into what I call a downward spiral. So this relates to a lack of presence, which really connects to a cognitive bias, an addiction to a past evaluation as opposed to a present one. So that's a very simple example of a cognitive bias, a mental addiction, a thought construct, something that we hold to be true because of some...
complicated twist in our mind that it's no longer actually true. And so, of course, a very simple antidote to most of this is presence. If we can look at a moment or chess position or an investment decision or any decision with very clean presence outside of emotional inertia, then we can often slice through. just amazing amounts of fat with just very, very simple decisions. If you think about the learning process, for example, this is one of the things I love about your approach to learning.
The language that you and I use is, you know, I call you a master of deconstruction. You look at the way people approach different sports and you find the biases, the false constructs. And you find a way to learn. a very straight path to learning as opposed to people getting mired in all sorts of tangled webs of complexity.
you know, essentially caused by cognitive biases. Wouldn't it, isn't that how you'd put it? Yeah, no, I think that's, I think that's true. And I obviously appreciate the the kind words i mean i think you and i have very complementary approaches and uh like you've i think said before and i tend to focus on the 80-20 analysis as it applies to people getting up and off the ground as quickly as possible to say top 5-10% in the general population whereas what's so cool about
Our conversations, what I enjoy so much in part, is that you're really focusing on that final leap. How do you go from being great to being the best? They're very complementary skill sets. I think that... Yeah, what I'm looking at, and this is a way to unearth cognitive biases, and just as a side note for people who want to look into this, you can just go to Wikipedia and search list of cognitive biases, and there's a long list, which is pretty fun to read.
And there are a number of books about these types of things, too. Think Twice, I think, is another one. The question that I ask myself, and I'm always interested in the questions that people ask themselves because I find to my mind that those... That internal dialogue is what defines your day-to-day thinking and what you think you become. So it's so critical.
that you ask yourself the right questions. And in my mind, or I should say rather, when I'm trying to deconstruct, say, a sport, all I'll ask is to start with, you know, what rules are people following that are not... Right. So, you know, outside of the law and science and even within science and within law, reality is kind of negotiable. So, I mean, a good instance of that is.
The high jump and the Fosbury flops, Dick Fosbury, was really the first guy to go backwards over the high jump. And up to that point, there had been straddle kicks and all sorts of different approaches. And he was, you know, ridiculed at first and then he was called a cheat because he won the gold medal and now everybody uses that approach. And so, you know, having a list of questions, right? Who's good at this? Who shouldn't be is another one that I love to ask because.
You might find someone, for instance, you were talking about the different styles in chess or jujitsu or in chess, you know, as sort of... Reference to your first book, you have attacking chess players, right? Then you have very different stylistic differences and you're very quantitative players. And for the TV show, for the Tim Ferriss experiment, I did an episode on poker. And I've avoided poker my whole life because I viewed it as a game of champ.
And I had a former computer science guy who said, no, no, no, I'm not going to teach you to be lucky because I can't teach you to be lucky. But I can teach you to run some probabilities. And only bet when you have a good likelihood of a positive outcome, right? And what was so fascinating is you look at a guy like that and you'll find highly quantitative, say, hedge fund managers, for instance.
or investors of different types, tech investors who go to the World Series of Poker and they run the numbers. That's how they play. And then there are other guys who are completely, seemingly flying by the seat of their pants. I mean, they're very kinesthetic. They're playing an intimidation game. They're very physical. And so asking myself, for instance, who's good at this, who shouldn't be, if the assumption is you have to be very good at math to be good at poker, right?
Who admits to using no math, which might be misinformation, and let me look into how they do it. And then the second question is, have they replicated their results? Are there other people they've taught to do what they do to try to separate out? the nature from the nurture where possible. But I want to come back to the finance guys just for a second. And to ask you about rituals and routines, then I'm going to ask you about your own.
But what are some habits? And it doesn't have to be across the board with all these guys because they have such different personalities and approaches. With some of these really super high-level finance guys who are managing tens of billions of dollars, what are some of the habits that you've observed that you find interesting or rituals?
Well, let me answer that by describing some of the keystone habits that I recommend for people to internalize in the field. Sure, yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, meditation. We're speaking about this theme of cognitive biases, or basically observing your mental addictions the moment that they set in. Meditation is as deep and as powerful a tool as... as i could possibly describe i mean it's it's in an and
Maybe six or seven years ago when I was first talking about meditation with guys in the finance world, it seemed like some strange thing for them to take on. But as more and more people are integrating into the process, you wouldn't believe how many of the most powerful players in the world are meditating very deeply. It's just an amazing way of deepening the creative process, deepening presence.
expanding your energetic relationship to the world, gaining insight and realizing that most of the thinking that we do basically springs from mental addiction. And much of people's lives are spent in an emotional swirl, which is a reactive one.
And having a relationship's presence, which allows you to see through the illusion of that emotional swirl or of those mental addictions. I mean, meditation is an incredibly powerful tool, which I know you know quite deeply. I've been meditating since I was 17, 18 years old. So that's a very, very important habit. The idea of waking up first thing in the morning and turning your mind to creative work pre-input as opposed to checking email and getting reactive.
Opening up your channel to the unconscious mind first thing when you wake up in the morning. Doing the same, ending the workday with quality. Hugely important. I remember when I went skiing with Billy Kidd, who, as you might recall, was one of the great downhill racers from back in, I think, the 60s Olympic ski team. Awesome dude. Now he's out in Colorado wearing a cowboy hat. Just a timeless guy. Brilliant dude.
And, you know, he was saying to me years ago when I first skied with him, Josh, what do you think are the three most important turns of the ski run? And, you know, I've asked that question to a lot of people since. And most people will say the middle because it's the hardest, the beginning because they're getting momentum. Billy describes the three most important turns of the ski run of the last three before you got in the lift. And it's a very, very subtle point.
And for those of you who are skiers, you know that that's when the slope is leveled off. There's less challenge. Most people are very sloppy. Then they're taking the muscles off of. They're taking the weight off the muscles they've been using. They have bad form. The problem with that is that on the lift right up, unconsciously, you're internalizing bad body mechanics. As Billy points out, if your last three turns are precise, then what you're internalizing in the lift right up is precision.
So I carry this on to the guys who I train in the finance world, for example, ending the workday with very high quality. opens up, for one thing, you're internalizing quality overnight. And we're nurturing themes as well as skills, right? It's one thing to learn skills, but the higher art is to learn themes or meta themes. will ultimately spontaneously up into the internalization of hundreds of what I would call local habits.
And so if you're practicing quality, you're deepening the muscle of quality. And you're also focusing the unconscious mind in an area of complexity, which you'll then tap first thing in the morning. So this is a core habit, journaling. certain post-mortem processes reflecting on Ending your day with a reflection of the quality of the work, what are the core areas of complexity that you're wrestling with?
Hugely important. Would you do that immediately after the end of the workday, per se, before bed? How would you time that if someone wanted to try this themselves? I find at the end of the workday, the problem with doing these things right before bed is that then you're sort of consciously going to bed thinking about these things. At that point, I find you want to release... I mean, a very core idea is... You know, when you go home as best you can, unless you're red hot inspired, release.
It's very important to give your stress and recovery. Core habit, right? You want to be turning it on and turning it off. And teaching people to turn it off is a huge part. of teaching them to turn on much more intensely. Stress and recovery workouts, interval training. and meditation together are beautiful habits to develop to cultivate the art of turning it on and turning it off. So if you're undulating your heart rate, for example, between 170, 172, 174, and say 144,
The practice of lowering your heart rate over the course of, say, 45 seconds is akin to falling asleep, releasing your tension. And then as you're pushing your heart rate back up, you're learning to turn on. So you're using a physical metaphor. to train at the art of turning on incredible intellectual energy and then turning it off. Marcel Garcia, who we were talking about, one of my most beautiful memories is of him in, you know, world championships right before going into the semifinals.
Brock is bleacher. Everyone's screaming, yelling. He's sleeping. Sleeping in the bleacher. He'd wake him up. He'd sort of stumble into the ring. You've never seen a guy more relaxed before going into a world championship fight. And then he can turn it off so deeply. And man, when he goes in the ring, you can't turn it on with any more intensity than he can. And his ability to turn it off is directly aligned with how intensely you can turn it on. So training people.
to do this, have stress and recovery, undulation throughout their day. And then thematically, this ties into, again, this internal proactive orientation. and you know building a daily architecture which is around understanding your creative process as opposed to reacting to things, feeling guilty that you're not working, really teaching people to tap into their internal compass. So those are some of the core themes and habits that I would own.
Bring up first. But I could go on. I could spend three hours talking about this subject. Let's do it. We'll have a part two. The meditation I wanted to touch on for a second. As you know, I've been taking that very seriously for particularly the last six months or so.
And I received an email the other day from the teacher that I used for transcendental meditation. And there are many different types of meditation. I'm curious. I'm going to ask you about how you format your own meditating in a second. There are many different types. I have my issues, my likes and dislikes as it relates to almost all of them.
I received an email with a link to an article, and the title is Bridgewater Founder Ray Dalio Credits Transcendental Meditation for His Success. For those who don't know, He's the founder of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. They have, what, $100 billion plus under management, I think.
And his quote is, meditation more than any other factor has been the secret to whatever success I've had. That is a hell of an endorsement. So for me, it's been... getting over that resistance to what I perceived as sort of a woo-woo new agey type thing. And the ability to sort of view it almost as just a warm bath for the mind where I'm taking a mini vacation from my own brain in a way. may or may not, depending on who you ask, be the most helpful way to look at it. But I found that.
a very kind of useful lens through which to view it. But how do you, if there is a particular type of meditation you follow, what is it? Or how do you personally? meditate. What do you think of or not think of, how long do you do it, etc. When I was 17, 18, I started studying very simple contemplative and quiescent Buddhist sitting meditation where I would focus on my breath.
You know, this is when I was a late teenager. And then I started getting involved with Tai Chi. And I started studying East Asian philosophy very deeply. And this is where I got increasingly into moving meditation. which is the most deep practice or the practice that I've personally done most deeply, Tai Chi for meditation. So the meditative form of Tai Chi is sort of
the essence of the art and then the fighting application is what I was competing in. And so I spent many years meditating four, five, six hours a day with Tai Chi. Today, I combine my Tai Chi practice with sitting meditation again. Most people, when they enter meditation, what I suggest is they just practice very simple sitting meditation. following their breath. And it's a practice which doesn't have to be very complex. They can, for example,
just sit either cross-legged or comfortably in a chair and follow their breath. And it's very interesting because they'll notice after one or two seconds that their mind starts racing on. And usually what happens when you have really driven guys who are trying to meditate for the first time and their mind races up, they get all pissed off. They're just like, ah, angry, frustration. They feel like they're failing at meditation. And one of the most important things...
to do is to embrace the fact that meditation is about perfection it's about the return to breath so when you find your mind racing you observe that and you return to your breath that's a tough emotional hurdle for a lot of guys And it's very interesting because over time, you know the metaphor of basically the mind is a wild stallion that over time
You're taming, and you ultimately learn to steal it. It's racing. It's bucking. It's pulling against anything. Any kind of line you put on it, but ultimately the circles get smaller and smaller and you learn to observe when your mind is getting caught up in some kind of mental or emotional addiction more and more quickly and fluidly. And the return to breath becomes easier and easier. And it's very interesting, by the way, as a competitor, because I relate to the theme of channeling emotions,
fear whatever is rising as a world-class competitor in very much the same way we might speak about meditation. I spoke at a conference on grit recently and it was very interesting for me because For the most part, when I listen to resilience, which is, of course, a core educational principle in a lot of things.
Charter schools these days are hugely important, teaching kids to be resilient. And it's very interesting because when I hear people speak about resilience, We're moving a little bit aside from meditation, but we'll bring it back. The focus is on, for example, overcoming difficulty, suffering, learning to basically push through. What people don't realize is that...
World-class performers, what they've done is they've reoriented their relationship to suffering or to the point of resistance. They've learned to embrace it. They've learned to see the beauty in these moments where there's pain because that's incredible room for growth. And I think that a lot of what you learn to do in meditation... is observe the addictive way you might be defining something. And if you want to, you can simply alter that definition. So you can change your relationship to
pain or the rain or a huge storm or fear or anger. So, for example, people from the outside will use the term fearlessness, right? But if you speak to any great soldier or SEAL team member or fighter or UFC guy, they'll tell you, mixed martial artist, great world-class fighter.
they'll tell you that they feel fear. They just know how to sit with their fear and how to work with it and how to channel it. So the idea of fearlessness is sort of a false idea which is imposed from the outside by a spectator. And when you observe world-class performers, what they've learned how to do is harness fear, nerves, anxiety. bring them in, embrace them, have a working relationship with them and channel them into intensity.
And meditation is an incredible forum or vehicle which you can do this because you learn to observe where you have addictive relationships and you realize that they're not absolute and you can actually transform your relationship to any of these thoughts. patterns, thought constructs, cognitive biases or emotional patterns.
Yeah, I was looking up a quote, as you mentioned that, because I wanted to get it right, but it's one of my favorite quotes from Customato, who trained boxers like Floyd Patterson, Jose Torres, most famously perhaps Mike Tyson. And he would say, the hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent while the coward runs. It's the same thing, fear, but it's what you do with it that matters.
I started meditating and gave up meditating many, many times because I had the response that you mentioned about type A personalities where I'd be sitting there and I thought the objective was to quiet my mind. And I'll come back to that in a second.
And so when I failed at quieting my mind because it would be ticking off the to-do list or being like, oh, that fucker who said A, B, and C to me the other day and it would just like harp on these ridiculous things and I'd get then pissed and then I'd get pissed that I was getting pissed. And then I would get up and have a cup of coffee and like storm out of the house, which didn't seem like a productive meditation session.
I actually started doing it consistently when I kept it really short. And a friend of mine recommended this where I would, number one, be comfortable. So I would sit down, but to avoid back pain, I would actually lean against a wall, which is very commonly thought of as a big no-no. So I would lean against a wall.
to keep my back straight, and I would listen to one music track. I would listen to one song every morning, the same song as a cue, and I would just pay attention to my breath and focus on being... an observer of my thoughts, but not trying to control them at all. So if all I did was think about my to-do list the entire time, that's fine as long as I'm paying attention to my breath. And that non-attachment to an outcome, i.e. controlling my thoughts, was very helpful. And the format that...
I followed subsequent to that, and we can have a longer conversation about why it finally clicked, but the short answer is accountability. I had a teacher who was going to give me a hard time if I didn't do my meditating and then report back.
20 minutes, let's just say 10 to 20 minutes twice a day. And what I found was By allowing the thoughts to occur and not judging myself because let's say I'm thinking about email or the grocery shopping I need to do or whatever, just letting that happen but getting good at observing it. I was able to then have more emotional awareness later, which would prevent cognitive biases and bad judgments. So what I mean by that is...
I'm an impatient guy. I always have been, ever since I was a little, literally little kid, like 12, 13 years old, if I was at the... restaurant with my mom and dad and the server didn't come over and pour water after we'd been gone dry for like five minutes. I'd just get up and walk into the kitchen and like grab a pitcher and walk out. And I'm really impatient and I get angry. I mean, I get angry about things that I view as deliberately slow and sloppy.
For me, and that anger can be harnessed sometimes into really productive aggression, but it's also it wears you down at both ends. So what I found is after meditating consistently for even a week or so, when that anger would start, I was better at not just become, I was better at... observing Tim as a third person, right? Like, oh, look at that. Like Tim's getting angry about something really small and stupid.
as opposed to simply becoming angry and then causing problems for myself, whether it's just internal or interacting with other people. Yeah, I agree with you completely on the meditation. I love that image of you as a 12-year-old racing into the kitchen and bringing up the water. It's such a great metaphor for your life today. You find different examples of fatness in the process, and you race in there, and you get the water, and you slice right through. That's beautiful.
I love it. So let's do a couple of rapid fire questions that are all tied into this stuff, but we can just do short questions with a couple of short answers. So complete the following statement. My favorite time of day is blank. holding my son in my arms after I've done my, I've woken up, I've done a 20, 30 minute journaling session. I get my son, I bring him downstairs and I give him his bottle of milk and I hold him and I look him in the eye and I tell him,
how proud I am of him. And we talk about what he's thinking about and what he's working on while he has his milk. And I think it's the most magical part of my day these days. That's in the morning. Yeah, I wake up about half an hour before him. I do a big creative burst.
As a parent, your sleep patterns change pretty dramatically, but I found this rhythm where I wake up and I do that first, and I just love that first morning energy time with him, and we have this deep connection while he's having his own. I love it. What time do you wake up? I usually wake up around 7, 7.05. And he's usually waking up around 7.30, 7.35. I'm endlessly fascinated by morning routines. So this might seem really digging, like I'm digging into the minutia. But when you wake up...
It sounded like you wake up and you have 30 minutes to journal before bringing your son downstairs. Do you brush your teeth, drink a cup of coffee, any of that before you journal? Or do you just roll out of bed, walk into the office and sit down to write? My routine is that I roll out of bed, I brush my teeth, I go downstairs and I sit down. with my journal, and I start writing. And I immediately apply myself to a reflection that I sort of targeted my mind at in the...
in the evening or late afternoon before. And then I just let it rip. I have a big creative search. And then once I hear my son, I go get him and then Then I have my breakfast, usually a bowl of oatmeal, after he has his milk, and then I have a cup of coffee about half an hour after that. Cool. Related to You strike me as a happy guy. Obviously, we all have our challenges then and again.
the place I'm getting remodeled at the moment, uh, which, which, which I want, I won't go into diatribe at the moment. I'm very excited about it, but. It's my 12-year-old Tim wanting to go get the water pitcher. It's not being very helpful right now. What are three things, could be two, three things that you believe you need in order to be happy? And that could be for you. It could be for people in general. I'm just curious. how you would think of that question or answer.
One of the great things about you and I being dear friends and having these conversations is that you tend to be very good at thinking in bullets and lists of three things. And that's not how my brain works. And I can tell you the essence of how I relate to that question. I'm not going to give you a three-bullet answer. That's just not how this brain operates. I've built a lifestyle around being true to myself. Largely, maybe a big reason is because my mom used to always tell me as a kid,
to follow my heart, follow my dreams. I never made decisions for money or for external. things. And I always trusted if I was true to myself, these things would follow. And so, you know, my professional life, my foundation, my school, I only work with people who I feel are ethically aligned who have a good energy who I feel really good about intuitively I keep empty space in my life I rarely have more than one or two meetings a day
Um, my life is about quality and not quantity. It's about depth and not breadth. Um, My business is based on doing very, very deep and very excellent work with just a handful of people. And so I really like to cultivate quality as a way of life. And I believe that when you're not cultivating quality, you're essentially cultivating sloppiness. And so, you know, the idea of building the musculature of quality and being like a heat-seeking vessel for me, I take great pleasure.
in observing the beauty of the little moments in life. And so for me, my lifestyle is based on working out every day. I just focus on structuring a day that will allow for my creative process to be written. I'm present with my son. I have my offices at home. I'm with him in the morning. I'm with him. I see him throughout the day. I'm with him. I give him his bath.
I've eliminated almost all travel that takes me away from my boy. I'm going to a conference this weekend. I'm taking my wife and my baby are coming with me. build a life around being true and I don't build it around anything material. And that's really the essence of how I personally relate to this question. Of course, there's different solutions for everybody, but that works for me. This is something that is being true to oneself, I think.
that most people struggle with, right? And I think it's a goal that most people have, at least in the abstract, but I'd love to dig into... some concrete details of that. And perhaps you could share. an example of something you changed, like maybe where you got slightly off the path and made a correction to be true to yourself and what that looked like. Well, I mean, for me, a very clear example is my public life. So I was a young kid, fell in love with chess.
I won my first national championship when I was... Late eight, early nine. When I was 11, a book came out, Searching for I Fisher. And then when I was... a movie came out about my life based on the same book that my dad initially wrote. And so I was really thrust into the spotlight. And so I, you know, without me wanting to, I was just, you know, a young, passionate artist. I loved playing chess and competing in chess. I was put out there and I had paparazzi following me everywhere.
I was really living in the spotlight in a way I wasn't necessarily emotionally prepared for. And I felt in my teens how that challenged my love for this art because my love for it was so pure in it. you know, that, that fight, that fight to stay true to my art. Um, Taught me some very deep lessons. After I finished high school, I took off and I left the country largely to study chess very deeply, undistracted from publicity. I moved to Eastern Europe. My girlfriend at the time was from Slovenia.
No one knew me out there, and it was a beautiful life. left the public world. And since then, when I came back, I've had these periods where I've been exposed to publicity and I've been in periods where I've been deep in a cave and moved away from it. And I think that this is a very clean example. I mean, other than you, very few people drag me out of the public eye. Throw a net over the bear and drag him out of the cave. You have a way of doing that to me.
But in a beautiful way. And I mean, I've found that the privacy of my life. not doing things, not getting caught up in the swirl of fame or seeking external adulation is a very important thing for me personally. Everyone's different, but for me, I mean, I... Maybe I have a little bit of an oversensitivity to this because of my youth, because I was out there so intensely as a young guy. And I think it really challenged my love for the game.
This is an example of the kind of decision that I'll make. I think it's very important for me to... to live the vast majority of my life privately. I don't do very much that will allow me to be recognized in the street and live my life as a celebrity. Because I've gone down that path and I love my privacy.
And I also have built a career around my businesses, working with people who are similar, who are not seeking the limelight, who are not out there on television every day, who are world class, but are... No one around them, other than people very close, have any idea that they have been so incredibly successful from a monetary way. They try to raise their kids not to be spoiled. The kids are gritty kids.
you know, great philanthropists, um, really good people. And I love, I'm very drawn to people who have been enormously successful. Um, But don't get caught up in the external crap that comes with success. And are real, you know, who are living their life tapped into the love. And that's how I try to live. What are some of your...
What are the books, let's just stick with books for a second, that you've either most gifted to other people or most recommended to other people? Because there are many people listening to this probably who... won't necessarily have the opportunity to interact with the types of high-level folks that you and I are so fortunate to have the chance to interact with. they can do that vis-a-vis books or narratives, documentaries, et cetera. What are some books that have had a formative impact on you?
I mean, so if we go back to when I was 17, 18, Jack Kerouac had a huge impact on my life, On the Road, Dahmer Bums. These are the, you know, his books were initially kind of... tapped me into the idea that life could be ecstatically beautiful. And I moved into studying Taoism, so Lao Tzu, The Da De Jing, hugely, just unbelievably deep. But of course, the translation of that book that you read will be formative. And my favorite translation is the G.F. Wufeng and Jane English.
translation of the Da De Jing. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I think one of the most important books ever written by Robert Persig, who has become a very dear friend over the years. When the Art of Learning came out, my publisher asked me, who would you love to read this book? And I said, well, the one person I'd really want to read that book
is Robert Persick. But to me, that was just, you know, he lived like a deeply secluded life. But they somehow managed to get him a copy of the book he got in a big bushel from his publisher and he read it and he... contacted me and wrote, I mean, I was so honored that he was moved by it. And he and I, and over the years, it developed really interesting dialogue. So then the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is one of the most important books.
in the world the focus on quality dynamic quality um finding art in learning to find art in anything deeply deeply brilliant um philosophical book um Shantaram, one of the most beautiful novels I've ever read. Gregory David Roberts is also someone I've gotten to know very well. Just an ecstatically beautiful, beautiful book. And, you know, of course, I'm also a lover of fiction. I mean, Hemingway has been...
He's probably the most important writer of my life. Any particular novel stand out for you of his? I mean, I think that... For Whom the Bell Tolls, just exquisite novel, Green Hills of Africa, amazing. His short stories are utterly magnificent. I think Green Hills of Africa is one of the most underrated books that he's written. His complete collection of short stories, I mean, there's one magnificent gem after the next.
Of course, Old Man and the Sea is the one everyone speaks about, and it's a beautiful book. I guess if I had to have a favorite, it would be For Whom the Bell Tolls. For Whom the Bell Tolls, yeah. For those people listening who also want... insight into his writing style, A Movable Feast. Oh, magnificent book. Yeah, also. And that's where Hemingway really speaks to his writing process. Fantastic book. So fascinating.
You know, there's a great book, by the way, Tim, which I think you've read, which is, I think it's Hemingway on Writing. Have you read this book? I did read it, yep. I also read that. I mean, if someone wants to get to know Hemingway, it's just a fantastic compilation of all of Hemingway's writing in letters, in his books, in his articles, everywhere.
put together thematically basically Hemingway on the writing process. I think it's one of the most important little collections of on creativity that I've ever run into absolutely brilliant book and it's really short I remember I read it on Kindle on a short flight that I had and just jammed right through the whole thing One of the recommendations was...
Write Drunk, Edit Sober. And I realized that Write Drunk, Edit Sober does not translate to podcasts very well. The last podcast that I did with my buddy Kevin Rose... If you record drunk and try to edit sober, it doesn't really actually work the same way. Right. That's interesting. Oh, man. What... And we'll just do a couple more questions because this has been fun. But if you had to...
run out of your house and just take a handful of things with you. Obviously, your family is safe, so that's accounted for. What would you take and why? uh... in a very dangerous situation You don't have to fend for yourself with weaponry or create fire with flint or anything like that. There's a fire in your house. You just have to get out to the street.
then you're going to obviously sort things out later. But assuming your family is safe, what would you take with you? Just what you can carry, basically. That's a really great question. I actually had that experience years ago when I was playing chess, and it speaks to how crazy I was. I was studying chess with this brilliant Russian grandmaster named Yuri Razovayev, who actually wrote about my book.
And I was on the fifth floor of a walk-up. There was an old one-bedroom I had in my first apartment. And, um, and there was something that we were deep, deep into chess study and there was a huge fire. And I, I looked at, there were like five fire engines and dudes screaming at us.
And we had to go out to Fioscape. And I ended up going back in and grabbing my computer with all of my chest analysis, which is such a random thing to do. It was so unimportant. I mean, it speaks to how different I've become. Yeah. And it ended up being, it had been seconds from being an updraft and blowing the whole building up. Um, Yeah, so I wouldn't do that. I don't know, man. Honestly, when you ask me that question now, if I think that my family was safe,
I have nothing material that I would grab. That's great, man. That's a very stoic response in the most positive way. All right, my man. I'm going to ask you one more. Actually, I'll give you a choice of two questions. Let's do that. All right, let's do it. So the first option is...
So when you were a kid and now how would you answer the question, what do you want to be when you grow up? That's question number one. Question number two is if you had a committee of three people living or dead to help you make decisions, who would you choose and why?
These are great questions, man. Thanks. By the way, I'm borrowing liberally from like every good interviewer I've ever come in contact with. Right. But so it goes. You want me to answer them both or you want me to answer one of them? You can answer them both. Those are two very different questions. I mean, this is tough, man. Yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to be respectful of your time, but if you have time and you have some thoughts on both, let's go for it.
when I grew up, I wanted to, when I was a, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. I should love, I loved, um, so there was something about sport. Um, So I think that there was a, I mean, and I spent a lot of my life as a, as a competitor from age basically six until, you know, 35, I was basically a professional competitor in different fields. Um,
Today, my mom always said to me that she felt like that was a phase and that I was a healer. That was her language. And a lot of what I do today is... help people express themselves in as pure a way as possible, artistically, in a way that gives them joy. I think that my plan... is sometime in the next four or five years, I'm 37 now. I'm thinking about it when I'm 40, 41. Um,
I guess that would be three, four years now I'm getting old. To turn my mind to everything, taking everything I've been doing in these different laboratories and apply it to a world-changing education initiative. Helping children in a just... fulfill themselves in a very deep way, I think is a central calling, which I'm, that's, that's, I'm not going to say it's my end game, but that's, that's the next major chapter, I think of my life that I'm building.
I've been running my foundation for many years now, and we do beautiful work, but I have an allergy to scaling if it's going to dilute quality in any way. And so I've been sort of building up the ground. work to ultimately be able to do something hugely important in education. So I think that that's going to be... the core of how I would... I'm building towards that in a few years.
in terms of the committee of three people. Just to interject for a second, that's also, I think, my calling, and of course we've spoken at length about this. If you need a co-conspirator, count me in for that one. Certainly. Yeah, dude, let's plan on this. Let's play four or five. We have to figure out when it's going to be. Maybe four or five years, we'll team up, and we'll take the world by storm. Sounds like a plan, man.
I love it. I love it. This sort of taps that movement away from self. I mean, as a competitor, you're constantly, you're fighting. In many ways, you're you know, you're, there's something about, there's a focus inward on oneself, and I, and becoming a parent, I've definitely felt this movement, um, away from that I mean my son is just my love for him just so transcends anything I ever
I ever felt before. It's been really, really important to experience. When you become a dad, man, then we're going to have some fun. I can't wait. Look forward to your sleepless nights. Oh, man, yeah, you're going to see battle weary. Timbo, I need to work on my polyphasic sleep. So this is a committee of three people. What are your thoughts? Well, one person who would be on that committee is someone who...
who I know, a very deep friend of mine who happens to be in the finance world. His name is Dave. I can't speak about what his last name is. a deeply meditative spirit, great wisdom, um, as insightful human beings I've ever known in my life. And I think that that he would definitely be on, um, on that list. Um, I mean, can we go into, can I say outrageous characters like Gandhi? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go for it, yeah. I mean, I think about... Gandhi, Lao Tzu, the Buddha. I mean, my God, what a...
But you see, there's a certain, yeah. I don't know, man. I don't know if I can answer this question very intelligently. That's the perfect way to end. Yeah. I don't know. And Tim, of course, you, man. I mean, you give me so much crap in life. that I would have to call you because you'd be the one just to keep you'd definitely be the one to slice through all the nonsense yeah and my mom that's the most important one my mom yeah she's given me the most um
deep advice in my life. I mean, my mom is the one person who has really embraced these crazy decisions that I've made when I've left arts, when I was at the tops of those fields. because of some strange calling I had inside. I think my mom would have to be the top of any list like that. She's my hero. My mom's the greatest person I've ever known about.
Awesome, man. Well, this has been a lot of fun. Obviously, we're going to have a lot more conversations. Is there anything you want to – any parting thoughts? advice, suggestions, anything like that that you'd like to impart. If not, we can call it a day, but the mic is yours if you have anything you'd like to add. No, I love this. It's been really interesting. I guess if I'm going to close with a thought, it would be... One thing that I've been doing in the last...
years since writing The Art of Learning is I've been exposed to some of the most brilliant thinkers in these different fields. I've studied the patterns behind them and I've studied the people who study them. And one of the things we have to be wary of in life is studying the the people who study the artist as opposed to the artist themselves.
Persig, who the author of Zen and the Art of Mosa Cycle Maintenance that I mentioned, he uses this great term, the philosophers and the philosophologists, right? The philosophologists are the ones who are basically philosophizing about the philosophers as opposed to doing philosophy.
And the vast majority of philosophers today actually are just philosophologists. Similarly, you and I have discussed, there's the writers and there's the literary critic. There's the artist and the art critic. And I think that we have to be very careful. when we study excellence and we're thinking about our own path to excellence.
that we're studying and we're tuning in to the direct experience of people who have actually been there as opposed to the armchair professors who are talking about it. Right. If we spend our life in the trenches and we spend our life studying that last 0.1% of the learning process, what we see is that final passage to excellence is really about navigating that razor's edge where you have to be willing to go right up against it.
a potential enormous blunder. You have to improvise, for example, trust your intuition in moments where all the objective mathematical faculties you've developed are telling you something else, but your intuition is operating at a higher level. You have to really... be willing to go up to the brink of disaster to succeed in moments where you're, for example, fighting in the finals of a world championship or in the very last seconds of a Super Bowl or an NBA final.
And in navigating these things, the armchair professors will often have the exact opposite of good advice. And so what I would say is, for one thing, you know, Listen deeply internally to the core of your being and build your game plan from there. Trust your gut and then build a lifestyle. around listening to that and cultivate the love and that's the other thing I'd say is that whether you're talking about the beginning of the learning process or the very final surge or surges
it's about the love. We're thinking about parenting, cultivating resilience, cultivating excellence, cultivating creativity. What the armature professors all forget about is the love. Um, And that's what I see consistently with people who have found the most pleasure, the most happiness.
and created the greatest art is that they have a profound passion for what they do, not only the big moments, but the little moments, the moments that others would call pain. They learn to love practice. They learn to love the point of resistance. I said, don't forget about the love. I guess that's what I'd like to say. That's a, that's a beautiful way to end this, man. Well, Josh, uh, I'm sure we will be talking next time. We'll have some wine and, and, uh,
checks out, obviously, The Art of Learning and really keeps an eye on what you have coming when you decide to push stuff out of the cave. Thanks, brother. This was a blast, bro. Enjoyed it. All right, buddy. I will talk to you soon.
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