every mental health complication or

diagnosis is increasing and I've worked

with different scientists [music] and

done a lot of experimentation on myself

having grown up with multiple depressive

episodes every year to see if [music]

there are root causes that we can

address and so I'll just throw out a few

things that have been very very helpful

first there's brain stimulation when I

did this I had months of no anxiety then

there's something called Vegas nerve

stimulation and one of the most heavily

cited scientists of the last 30 years

has seen a wild collection of benefits

So, let's talk about that.

>> Tim Ferris has become a performance

hacking expert after speaking with over

800 influential voices on his podcast.

[music]

>> Now, he's taking the most valuable

frameworks and techniques to help you

optimize productivity, health, and

[music] performance. Tim, the variety of

things that you write about, talk about

is so wide. So, what is the question

that most people should ask you?

>> How do you break down complicated

subjects and accelerate your ability to

learn? because time is one of our most

valuable non-renewable resources. And so

I have a framework that you can apply to

any subject matter which consists of the

80/20 principle which is picking the 20%

to focus on that will give you 80% of

what you want. For instance, there's

hundreds of thousands of words you could

learn in Spanish. But with the most

frequently used500, you can get to

reasonable conversational fluency in

almost any language in 8 to 12 weeks.

And if you figure that out, you're ahead

of 99.9% of the world. And what do you

think is the question most people want

to ask you?

>> So there's a lot of questions around

mental health and I feel like I have a

moral obligation to help people because

I was uh sexually abused by a

babysitter's son on a weekly basis. I

was this close to killing myself. And it

can have a lot of effects, but these are

things that you can slowly chip away at.

and instead of feeling like you're held

captive by them, feel like you can take

the [music] pain and make it part of

your medicine.

>> So,

I see messages all the time in the

comments section that some of you didn't

realize you didn't subscribe. So,

[snorts] if you could do me a favor and

double check if you're a subscriber to

this channel, that would be tremendously

appreciated. It's the simple, it's the

free thing that anybody that watches

this show frequently can do to help us

here to keep everything going in this

show in the trajectory it's on. So,

please do double check if you've

subscribed and uh thank you so much

because in a strange way you are you're

part of our history and you're on this

journey with us and I appreciate you for

that. So, yeah, thank you

[music]

Tim.

You're a remarkably interesting

individual in part because the variety

of things that you write about, talk

about clearly have deep curiosity in is

so wide that you're you're hard to to

put into any particular box. So I my

first question to you is how do you

think about the work you do and how do

you sort of like self-define if you do

at all who you are and what your mission

is. I think of myself as a

self-experimenttor

student and teacher in that order. The

purpose though ultimately is to try to

find simplicity through complexity or

topics that can be complicated and then

provide some type of recipe or algorithm

that people can test with low risk and

hopefully a decent amount of upside.

>> We're going to talk about a lot of

different things today. So it probably a

good place to start which is learning

how to learn and especially in a world

that's changing at such speed. There's a

lot of people that are being forced into

relearning of some sort whether it's

professionally or in other domains. So

metalarning, I've never heard this term

before.

>> Mhm.

>> How how do what is metalarning and how

do I learn how to learn better? I would

love to cuz I spend so long as you do

speaking to really interesting people

>> and I sometimes worry that some of that

information is being wasted.

>> Yeah. The basic idea is this that rather

than treat different

subjects or fields as these silos that

need to be figured out independently,

how can you develop just a broad

framework that you can apply to any

subject matter? And the acronym that I

generally recommend folks, DSS,

deconstruction, selection, sequencing,

stakes. There's deconstruction, which is

taking a

fairly ambiguous goal like learn to swim

or learn Japanese.

None of those are actually very

descriptive, right? So deconstructing

any one of those is taking let's just

use the learn to swim as an example and

breaking it down into constituent parts

right and you can you can do that very

effectively with the help of an expert

you can try to do it yourself but for

instance I mean if you want to find a

silver medalist from the Olympics two

Olympics ago you can probably get on a

Zoom call with them for

$100 an hour maybe $50 an hour like you

do have access to world class talent.

>> Then they would help you figure out all

right there all these different possible

components. When you get to the next

part which is selection, you're picking

the 20%. This is the 8020 principle,

right? Prao's law. So you're picking the

20% that will give you 80% of what you

want. Let's just use language learning

in that case. Well, you can very easily

find word frequency lists. So for any

given language like Spanish, sure, or in

English, hundreds of thousands of words

you could learn. But with the most

frequently used 1500,

you can get to reasonable conversational

fluency in almost any language in 8 to

12 weeks without question if you

approach it methodically. But you need

the right material first. And then the

next S is sequencing. Putting it in the

right order. And I feel like this is the

magic sauce that gets lost a lot, which

is what is a logical sequence for

learning any given skill. What do you

practice first? So in the case of

swimming for instance, forget about

breathing. Like you need to figure out

like fuselage right, fuselage left, and

gliding, kicking off a wall in the

shallow end of a pool before you ever

think about breathing

>> and getting comfortable putting your

head under water, etc., etc. So, so

there's the deconstruction, selection,

sequencing, and then the last S stands

for stakes, which means incentives. So,

how do you ensure that you will do

actually what it is you say you're

committing to doing? If more information

were the answer, we'd all be

billionaires with six pack abs. So,

information is clearly not sufficient.

It's necessary, but not sufficient.

Incentives drive behavior change. So,

you need good intentions are not enough.

Even a system is not enough. You need

strong incentives. So, right, you could

give uh 500 bucks to a friend or 100

bucks, whatever. Does the amount doesn't

really matter. And if you don't do what

you say you're going to do, they donate

it to like your most hated political

candidate in your name, right? That's

another one that I've seen work really

well. That's it. That DSS,

deconstruction, selection, sequencing,

stakes. And if you just check those

boxes moving that order,

uh, your ability to learn will hockey

stick in a really meaningful way. And

what's also important to realize when

you're trying to tackle any new skill,

doesn't matter what it is.

There will, it will not be just a linear

climb from, you know, bottom, left,

upper, right. But if you know in advance

that those are coming, then you can have

a plan for it and weather the storm. So

that's also very important. If people

expect some kind of like linear

incremental progress, it just ain't

going to happen. And so most people quit

before they hit any real inflection

points.

>> And how does one know what to pursue?

Like how do you decide what's worth

pursuing? Is there a framework for

knowing what should be on the Sunday

shelf and what should be today today's

work?

>> I do think about this a lot and I've

used this for a very very long time and

I don't see it changing anytime soon. I

refined it here and there. Almost

everything I do is a 6 to 12 month

project.

with lots of 2 to four week experiments

within that 6 to 12 months. I do not

have and I've never had a long-term

career plan 5 years, 10 years. If you

have a reliable 5 to 10 year plan,

you're going to be playing so safely

within the bounds of your capabilities

that I feel like you're selling yourself

short. So for me, it's projects and just

going 100% into those projects. But how

do you pick the project? I pick the

projects based on relationships and

skills. So new relationships or

deepening important relationships and my

learning curve skills I'm going to learn

and there's a condition though those

relationships and those skills have to

be able to transcend that project. I'll

give you an example. If I have a project

which is working on a startup as an

adviser that startup was stumble upon.

Okay so I'm working on Stumble Upon. Way

back in the day Stumble Upon was a huge

deal. It delivered a lot of web traffic

to various websites. It's kind of like a

Pandora for websites. A year or two into

that didn't go anywhere. But who was it?

I spent all my time with it. Stumbled

upon. It was the founder named Garrett

Camp and I became really close friends.

I learned a ton about web traffic. I was

also able to use my own website and blog

as a experimental destination. Right? So

there was upside even if it went to zero

for me. And few years later I get a text

from Garrett. we meet up to talk about

this new idea which is solving the taxi

problem in San Francisco. And then

shortly thereafter it was called Uber

Cab LLC and I became advised to that.

And I could give you 12 more examples

like that where like the first project

failed but I became friends with with

person A or B learned C and D and those

were applied two projects later to

something that was a home run. And

should everybody at every stage in their

journey have the same brainwork or you

know because if you think about the

different things one could acquire from

like resources, reputation, knowledge,

skills,

>> um network.

>> If I'm 18 and broke, should I be aiming

at the same things as if I'm Tim

Ferrris?

>> My instinct is to say yes.

>> And the reason I say that is that Lady

Fortune has a lot to say about what

happens. There are so many things

outside of your control that whatever

game you choose to play [sighs]

requires a system that allows you to

survive a a string of very bad luck.

Everything snowballs over time and

compounds and it's really hard to lose

long term as long as you're not

overindexing and betting too much on any

one project say financially.

It's

>> like you need to be able to withstand as

a team or as an individual a period of

very bad luck

>> in order for the law of big numbers and

statistics to work in your favor with a

system that gives you a slight edge. Um

so that's just my lens on the world in

general

at least professional choices and I

would say you mentioned a couple of

other things right like reputation and

so on. I feel like a lot of those are

second order effects. They happen

automatically if you are optimizing for

the relationships and skills.

>> So, uh this comes back to the

sequencing, right? So, it's like which

which is the lead domino. So, if you

have 12 dominoes, you kind of have to

decide in which order you're going to

stack them so that you knock over the

small domino, knock over the bigger

domino, then the bigger, then the

bigger, then the bigger. And over time,

if you're thinking about doing two

projects a year, let's just say if

they're 6 months each,

>> that's going to add up. It's going to

add up. So, you can afford to be

long-term greedy

instead of short-term greedy.

>> Is that what people call passion? Is are

you using the same

>> I uh I like energy over passion for a

couple of reasons? Because you could

have passion between the bed sheets. You

could have the passion of the Christ.

You had a different type of passion. I

don't like imprecise terms. Energy for

me, very simple. It's like, are you more

awake or are you sleepy? Right?

[laughter]

Do you feel like you can do this for

another 5 hours? Do you feel like you

want to stop in 15 minutes? These are

almost biological questions, like

biological state questions. So, it's

it's pretty intuitive for people to get

to a yes or no.

One of the subjects I've been thinking a

lot about recently, why have I been

thinking about this more recently? Don't

know, just a series of conversations

I've had on the show which make have

kind of pushed me closer to trying to

answer this question is about

about meaning and purpose and I guess

religion because actually it's only in

recent history that we've had so many

answers to some of these bloody

questions like the the solar eclipse. We

now know what's going on there. It's not

God testing us. So the the Vikings are

throwing like their spears at it. We

know what it is now. So not believing

atheism, agnosticism, is that a fairly

new construct? And are we not meant to

know so much? [laughter]

>> Well, I I think that humans need

certainty. They need something to

believe. And if your belief is that

non-belief is the way, well, guess what?

I mean, that's a belief,

>> right?

>> Okay. So I would say that my experience

is if you want to experience

self transcendence which I think is

critical for mental health you don't

need religion per se.

What you you can have I think a very

wonderful life without religion. I don't

think it's possible to have a wonderful

life without awe and wonder. And those

are things you can architect.

Those are things you can very much

architect and engineer and schedule in

your life. Why have veganism and

CrossFit done so well? They're

religions.

I mean, effectively, they may not have a

god, per se.

>> Yeah.

>> But certainly they have thought leaders,

they, you know, glassmen before his fall

from grace

and so on. Uh various athletes and so

on. But it's like clear rules,

community, self-inforcing

and

>> describing life sports.

>> Yeah. I mean, it's like this is religion

just goes by another name. It's a lot of

the behaviors, collective behaviors and

tenants of religion just lacking the

rword.

>> What you worship?

>> Yeah, I knew that was coming. Yeah, you

>> uh I think the risk for me is that I

feel like I have a moral obligation to

help people which can turn into a bit of

a savior complex because of a lot of the

pain that I've suffered in the past. Uh

I feel like I am not necessarily

uniquely suited, but I have the the

experience and the perspective that

allows me to be credible when talking to

people who are experiencing certain

types of pain. And that can become a

huge unhelpful self-imposed burden where

I feel a moral obligation to do things

at the expense of my own mental health

or physical health. So I would say

that's something that I have very

clearly on my radar as of a few years

ago. Uh

>> when did the first domino fall in that

regard?

>> In terms of uh you mean just general

challenges personally? Uh well, I was uh

might as well dig into it. So I I was uh

sexually abused by a babysitter's son

from 2 to four on a weekly basis, I

would say. Very clear memories of all of

it. And that will shape you. I mean,

that will definitely shape you. And it

can have a lot of effects. It can rob

you of agency. it can certainly make you

or contribute to me being hypervigilant.

I'm very slow to trust and

so on and so forth, right? like that is

a formative experience at a formative

time and

then later

had I think number one a genetic

predisposition if you just look at my

family to major depressive disorder

and

that showed up as let's call it on

average starting in early adolescence

like three to four

multi-week or multimonth depressive

episodes per

That is

half of your lived time. And

for people who may have experienced

something like this,

I will say that there are tools at work.

So now, never thought it would be

possible, but I would say now I have one

depressive episode of a few weeks at

most every 2 to 3 years.

Now the juxtaposition between those two

people is hard to overstate, right?

Those are those are two fundamentally

different experiences of being a human.

>> And um a lot of it ties back to some of

the levers I was talking about, right?

Metabolic psychiatry, psychedelic

assisted therapy,

bioelectric medicine, including

accelerated TMS. Like these things for

certain people really work and can be

durable. They're not one and done. Very

few things are, but uh these are things

that you can slowly chip away at and

become familiar with and

instead of feeling like you're held

captive by them, feel like

you can mold the experience into

something that is at least not

disabling.

>> Sometimes you can make it enabling. I

remember a psy very good psychotherapist

said to me maybe five years ago, six

years ago,

take the pain and make it part of your

medicine. And it was basically like all

that stuff is horrible. Nothing can

excuse it. Take that pain and made it

make it part of what you offer the

world. And there was I would say the

combination of that statement and also

COVID during which my girlfriend at the

time because she knew about my history

very few at that time there were maybe

two people in the world who knew about

it.

>> Wow.

>> Two long-term ex-girlfriends I'd been

with for like five to six years each and

>> parents didn't know parents

>> didn't know. Really?

>> Yeah. And

I was sitting with her during COVID just

as it was getting fully ramped.

[laughter]

And

I had always planned on writing a book

about it or like my healing journey

after my parents passed away cuz I

didn't want them to blame themselves.

And my girlfriend at the time over a

meal said something that had a huge

impact, which was, "Have you ever

thought about how many people are going

to pass away from natural causes or from

COVID or anything else before you ever

have a chance to write this book?" Cuz

you're probably not going to write that

book for 10, 15 years.

>> Think of all the people you could have

helped that you didn't help. And I was

like, "Okay, maybe I should workshop it

on a podcast." But keep in mind, none of

my family knew.

And so I was very fortunate to have a

very close friend who's based here in

New York City, Debbie Milman, Design

Matters Podcast, one of the longest

running podcasts in the world, wonderful

human. And she disclosed to me a number

of years back for the first time in full

fidelity

extended childhood sexual abuse. and we

talked about it

and I came clean with her after that

conversation with my girlfriend and I

asked her if she would be open to having

a conversation with me that we could

record but as a conversation because I

knew I couldn't do it as a monologue. I

just knew I couldn't do it and I told

her in advance I said I have no idea if

I'm ever going to share this but I feel

I feel compelled to at least record it.

And so we did and ended up publishing

that I want to say in September 2020,

something like that. And uh holy [ __ ] I

would say the most shocking thing about

that to me. I knew the statistics,

right? But statistics are very

impersonal. Like these these these types

of abuse, this type of sexual abuse is

incredibly prevalent. not just

uh involving young girls but also

involving a lot of young boys. I

probably had a quarter to a third of my

close close friends reach out to me for

the first time to talk to anyone and

confess that they had had some type of

similar experience. I I mean the

percentages were staggering.

Um that was really hard. Um I was

willing to absorb it. I have a lot of

capacity for absorbing that type of

thing, but it was hard because I would

get these tearful voice memos from guys

who had never told anyone, giving me

graphic details of everything that

happened. It's just gut-wrenching. I

mean, I remember walking up and down my

driveway just like tears running down my

face and like I don't cry much. that's

not really a thing for me, but just the

brutality of it

and uh then in retrospect

seeing so many things coales where I'm

like oh that explains all of these

unanswered questions I had about that

friend and also for me looking back

again hindsight being 2020 for a long

time I had let's just call it to pick a

number out of thin air it's like okay I

have seven mental health psycho

emotional challenges I need to address

and I was viewing them as independent

problems to address. But when I was

willing to reopen the door and look at

the childhood abuse, everything was tied

to that.

And

sometimes you just have to, you know,

put on your gas mask and go into the

cellar and contend with that. And

there's no one right way to do it.

Psychiatry is still in the dark ages.

It's where surgery was 300 years ago.

But still there are certain things that

work often without knowing the mechanism

seem to help a lot of people. So there

there are tools I think internal family

systems created by Dick Schwarz is very

interesting. The MDMA assisted

psychotherapy certainly for PTSD very

interesting and generally well tolerated

not right for everybody. And then a

number of the other things that I

mentioned uh family constellation

therapy also quite helpful for a lot of

people but

uh it's not insurmountable.

What I would not say is that some people

and I think that I would love to be able

to do this but I just can't get there or

who would say like I don't regret it.

I'm glad it happened because here's the

silver lining. No. Like if I could

control Z and remove that stuff 100% I

would I mean it did a lot of damage but

it gives me a credible voice when I am

talking to people who have had these

experiences and that is valuable.

>> Can you explain to me what you've

learned about how how you were 2 years

old at the time.

>> Yeah.

>> Between the age of two and four you

said.

>> What what is I'm I'm kind of asking

about the mechanism here. what is

happening in a 2 to four year old

child's brain

that causes the damage cuz presumably at

2 years old you don't understand what's

happening. You don't understand what

this individual this person who's older

than you is doing and the context of it.

>> Yeah.

>> So I'm I'm I'm trying to understand how

what the mechanism of harm is to a to an

innocent child who doesn't understand

understand the context of what's going

on here.

>> Yeah. I I don't think anyone can really

answer that particularly well with high

conviction. But what what I'll say is

that

uh I am blessed and cursed with a near

photographic memory for some things.

>> Mhm. [clears throat] So you have the

original

injury, you have the original insult,

>> but if you have, as I do, which is

weird, but like I can draw the floor

plan of almost any building, any

restaurant I've ever been in,

>> that's crazy.

>> Even once, I don't know why that is, but

I can do that. Now, there are upsides to

that. There are a lot of downsides, too,

in the case of abuse.

And

as you have greater and greater

ability to navigate the world and

realize what has happened, what is

happening, what might happen, and you

can recontextualize

highfidelity memories.

Well, then you realize

that that thing that was very weird at

the time was a lot more than just weird,

right? It was just straight exploitation

and abuse. So

that's the best answer I think I can

give to that question.

>> It's similar to what Lisa, Dr. Lisa

Feldman told me. She's a neuroscientist

who said she told me this story. It's

obviously an anecdote, so it's an N of

one. Um, so obviously taken with

caution, but she she told me the story

of a young woman who was abused by her

uncle

and um lived a normal life. Everything

was fine, slept well,

>> then watched Oprah

>> and Oprah had on there an array of women

that were abused

>> when they were younger

>> and she recontextualized what happened

to her and from that day onwards she had

all the symptoms of someone who was

abused. She was had sleep disruption,

health disruption, all these things.

Yeah.

>> Because she had suddenly, as you used

that term, reconceptualized actually

what had happened there.

>> Yeah.

>> It's made, you know,

>> Yeah. I mean, look, I think people who

have been abused are

those who survive and do well afterwards

in some way are become very good by

force, by necessity at

compartmentalizing.

And uh if you look at some of the very

very top tier military

um

special forces units and so on, the

percentages of those guys who have been

abused very high. Now, why why would

that be an asset? Well, if you're in

battle,

if you're in a chaotic environment where

people are dying or at risk of dying

and

you need to act effectively and calmly

in the most

disruptive, unpredictable environment

imaginable. Compartmentalizing is a

superpower, right? where you can

basically detach and take this observer

status almost as if you're watching

yourself

doing, you know, kill and capture raids

or whatever it might be.

>> Uh

but when some of those folks come back

to civilian life, the

compartmentalization is a severe

handicap and disruptor in family life,

right? So that superpower becomes a

super weakness.

And I think that that is true outside of

the military [clears throat] for people

who survive abuse. They may bury it

completely, put it under lock and key

subconsciously. So they don't even have

explicit recall of the event until

perhaps there's some trig triggering

catalyst that brings it back up. They

might just say, "Hey, look, that

happened. It's terrible. Like no need to

dwell on the past. I want to move

forward." which I think frankly is a

viable

strategy. I don't think everyone needs

to go, you know, put on their hazmat

suit and unearth everything bad that has

ever happened to them. I don't think

that is automatically productive or

helpful. Uh can make people really

despondent

because you can't fix the past, right?

Mhm.

>> Uh so I would say that in in my case

that compartmentalization

was uh on some levels very enabling,

right? Like I could outlast out endure

a lot of people in sports, in work. My

pain tolerance was incredibly high. Uh

but there's a there is a price to be

paid when you cauterize

certain aspects of yourself and disallow

certain types of emotions. Like there

are prices to be paid. And um I will say

that I think the

potential and promises of psychedelics

by and large are overstated.

But in terms of bringing emotions back

online,

that was almost entirely due to

psychedelic experiences for me.

>> Bringing emotions back online.

>> Yeah. So, I hadn't cried in like 20

years. Couldn't remember the last time I

cried. And then I'd be like on a plane

watching a really compelling kind of

heart-wrenching documentary and just

start crying on the plane. What the [ __ ]

is going on [laughter] here? The [ __ ]

And uh certain emotions just came back

online.

And I think that once those were online,

that is in part what then pulled along

with it, this revisiting of these

highfidelity memories. And then um

I had a very rough period because of

that and ultimately decided, you know

what, like this is the lead domino that

has already been tipped over that has

affected so many things. I can continue

to do patchwork

like remediation with band-aid solutions

for various things, but I'm just I'm

plugging holes in the side of the boat,

not asking why it's filling with water

in the first place. And I just decided,

you know what? I'm just going to take 6

months. And I know psychiatry is pretty

messy, but priority number one is to try

to find some resolution with this. And

that's what I did. I I canceled

everything because I was having

basically like a nervous breakdown and

wasn't sure I would be able to sort of

function in a business capacity anyway.

[gasps]

Um

so yeah, quite the adventure, quite the

misadventure, but you know, you play

your hand the best you can. Uh so having

a podcast, having the books, having a

blog has actually been incredibly

therapeutic for me in finding some way

to extract value from those experiences.

And let me just mention this because I

don't make anything from it. If people

are going through any experience like

this or if they've had a history of

trauma, uh you can just go to

tim.blog/trauma blog/trauma and it's got

the conversation with Debbie. It's a

hard conversation, but it also has a

list of resources because what I used as

a toolkit and what Debbie used are

completely different.

>> So, you get two very different

perspectives on things.

And uh I would say if I had to pick one

other blog post in this case that I am

was the hardest to put out and also that

I think I'm proudest of it would be some

practical thoughts on suicide. There's a

post called some practical thoughts on

suicide [gasps]

and um I know that has I know directly

that has saved a few hundred lives and

it it details my personal experience of

almost killing myself in college coming

very close like I had a date on the

calendar and the only reason it didn't

happen is because I lucked out this is

luck so at the time

I was taking a year off of uh college to

work in a few different jobs and ended

up being very isolated because my whole

class was graduating. My roommates at

the time had full-time jobs. So, I was

just kind of stuck at home working on my

senior thesis. Not a good recipe for

mental health. And

I reserved a book from the Princeton

University Library about assisted

suicide. And the book was out, popular

book it would seem. And back in the day,

the way the system worked is they would

mail you a physical postcard to your

address that was at the registars's

office. I had not updated my address to

my off-campus apartment. So, the card

that said, "Good news, your book on

assist suicide has arrived at Firestone

Library got mailed to my parents."

And that's what snapped me out of it was

realizing, "Oh, this isn't just about

me." right now. I don't have the

plausible deniability. I was going to

make it look like an accident. It's like

now I don't have it. That's been taken

away. Retrospect, thank God. And so, it

didn't happen. But the reason I wrote

that post is because I was at an event.

It's actually being interviewed by Jason

Calcanis on stage at this live this

weekend startups event.

Few hundred people in the audience and

stuck around afterwards and a bunch of

people came up and wanted books signed

and things like that. And there was one

really nice guy, well-dressed, had had

himself put together, who asked me to

sign two books, one for himself, and

then he asked me to sign a book for his

brother. And I said, "What would you

like me to say to your brother?" And he

just kind of froze. And I was like,

"Huh? Okay. Well, I don't want this guy

to feel stressed out." I was like, "I'll

tell you what, we can figure it out or

you can just leave it to me. There's no

rush. Like, we can do this after the

event." All right. Took care of

everybody else. And then the guy walked

me to the elevator and he explained, he

said, "Yeah, sorry about that. I froze

because my brother committed suicide

and we kept his room exactly how it

was." And he was a huge fan of your

writing. And so I wanted to get a book

signed by you and put it in his room.

And

he said, "Have you ever thought about

talking about mental health because you

could really help a lot of people? A lot

of people listen to you." And

unbeknownst to him, I had all the

history with coming this close to

killing myself.

And uh I sat with that and I was like,

"Yeah, he's right. He's really right. I

have a responsibility to write about

it." And that blog post took me at least

a month to write and rewrite and rewrite

and have proof read consider deleting.

And uh because that was also something

that my family didn't know about. I mean

they they knew about the book but they

didn't they didn't realize how close it

was. So

>> [snorts]

>> um that was also another

wonderful call with family to be like so

there's this thing about to come out.

[laughter]

Should probably give you a heads up so

you don't hear about it from everybody

in the extended family.

>> But uh

>> when your parents received that that

thing in the post y

>> that slip the library slip.

>> Yep.

>> Did they call you? My mom called me with

this very shaky voice being like, "What

is what is what is this? Why did you

reserve this book?" And I lied, you

know. I said, "Oh, well, I have a friend

at Ruters and he was trying to get this

book for a research project and they

didn't have it at their library, so he

asked me to get one from through

Firestone." But I was just lying. But I

knew the the jig was up, right? And uh

that was that was the turnaround point.

And that was also because this was in

1999 where I just decided to go 100%

into physical training.

U and there's a lot of backstory behind

it. People can read about it if they

want on that post. Some practical

thoughts about suicide. But

this is not it is so [ __ ] common.

It's very disturbing like when you

realize it's disturbing and reassuring.

It's disturbing because you realize how

prevalent it is and how close so many

people have come. [sighs]

It's reassuring because you realize also

very quickly that you are not alone.

You're not uniquely flawed. This doesn't

need to be personal and permanent.

People have solved for this. Looking at

my audience over the last 10 years,

every mental health complication or

diagnosis that I can think of is up and

to the right. Just [snorts] hockey

stick. So, chronic anxiety, treatment

resistant depression,

you name it, right? Obesity, loneliness,

which can take many different forms,

usually self-imposed.

And

when I see a constellation of issues

like that, I try to identify if I can,

not just the symptoms because then you

end up putting band-aids on things that

are interrelated but treating them as

silos, but looking underneath it to see

if there are root causes that we can

address. So

let me speak to that first. So on the

mental health side, I'll just throw out

a few things that have been very very

helpful. [snorts] There are the

behavioral questions and I would agree

that

at its simplest level, you can just look

at what we're evolved for, right? Just

take a close look at evolutionary

biology. Independence lone wolf is not

in our programming. It just is not. So I

would say when in doubt

revert on some level to what people were

doing a few hundred years ago at the

most recent right

and

that would be sort of assumption number

one. Then I would say to people who are

suffering right now,

the social interaction, analog human

interaction, I would just say is the is

the the one target when hit that solves

a multitude of other problems that

otherwise you'll be playing whack-a-ole

with. But if there are then remaining

problems with say chronic anxiety, OCD

when we get into some slightly trickier

terrain, schizophrenia, borderline

personality disorder, etc. There are a

few things that I have found in the

course of doing a lot of work with

different scientists and also a lot of

experimentation on myself having

[clears throat]

grown up with multiple long duration

depressive episodes every year

and those are a short list of different

types of brain stimulation specifically

something called accelerated TMS. The

before and afters that I've seen with

that are beyond incredible and equal or

surpass in some cases the amplitude of

effect and the durability of effect of

psychedelic assisted therapies.

Accelerated TMS, so transcranial

magnetic stimulation. And Nolan

Williams, Dr. Nolan Williams at Stanford

is is a good person to look up for more

on that.

>> What exactly is that? Is that putting

something on your head? M

>> there are different ways to do it

depending on the hardware that you're

using but in effect accelerated TMS

refers to a new protocol with better

hardware and software of a technology

TMS that has existed probably for 40

years if not more on some level and you

will instead of doing two or three

sessions a week for many months you do

10 sessions a day for 5 days straight.

So you are getting stimulated on the

hour every hour for about 8 minutes

[gasps]

and you do that for 10 hours straight

and then you compound that over 5 days

and you see for instance uh to give one

example a friend's child very terrifying

story uh but uh he was

a cutter this this 14-year-old self

harming.

>> Yeah. And the parents were just waiting

for the call that their child had

committed suicide. And this went on for

two or three years, I want to say. And

then within 3 days of accelerated TMS

treatment, it was like reversion back to

old self. And then with boosters every

say 3 to 6 months, that has been

durable. It's the before and after is

impossible to overstate. It's pretty

wild.

>> What are they doing to the brain? Is it

electrodes or is it music or it's

>> magnet? It's magnets.

>> Magnets.

>> Yep. And the what it feels like is is

someone kind of like flicking the side

of your head. It's sort of the

sensation. It is from a safety profile

perspective really compelling. Like the

downside risk is very very minimal. And

me with the most recent sessions that

I've done myself, I had probably four to

five

months of no anxiety. Like all of that

stuff vanished as if by magic wand and I

felt like I'd been meditating twice a

day for a year. I mean it was it was

incomprehensible. Uh it was it was

really really really uh remarkable. And

there's there's good clinical evidence

for this. It's not just end of one

anecdote. So, so that's one is the kind

of neurostim piece and there's a lot

more that's going to happen in that

space. But bioelectric medicine, that

would be one big lever that I think is

worth investigating if people are

suffering with any number of different

conditions.

Then you have metabolic psychiatry.

Primarily that would be dietary

intervention. Chris Palmer at Harvard is

is someone who's popularized this in the

last handful of years. metabolic

psychiatry specifically putting people

on a ketogenic diet. You have folks who

have been treated with 15 different

medications for schizophrenia for a

decade who get off all of their

medications within 3 to 6 months and

stay off simply by

stabilizing a handful of things in the

brain including adding a very beautiful

clean energy source which is ketones.

There are also a lot of possible

applications of the ketogenic diet or

modified ketogenic diets, exogenous

ketones meaning supplemental ketones for

neurodeenerative disease. So I have

three relatives right now who have

Alzheimer's and genetically I'm very

predisposed. So I'm thinking a lot about

this also from a preventative

perspective. So can I potentially

bolster mitochondrial health,

cellular cleanup, reduction of plaque

buildup, etc. by doing strict ketosis

for a month a year, fasting for

a week, perhaps once a year, water only.

I think there's actually pretty

compelling evidence that those are all

worthwhile interventions to consider if

you're very highly predisposed as I am.

And then I would say the last one I'll

mention now the psychedelic assisted

therapies for various conditions. I do

think that psychedelics and this is to

quote a very famous psychotherapist

named Stannisl Grath Stan Grath what the

telescope did for astronomy what the

microscope did for biology psychedelics

will do for the mind. I don't think

that's an overstatement because a lot of

the the clinical outcomes that we're

seeing with treatment resistant PTSD,

people who've had an average diagnosis

duration of like 14 to 17 years, nothing

succeeded. They do two to three sessions

and then you see like a 50 plus%

complete remission of PTSD. I mean, what

is going on there? I think in a very

productive way leading us to question

some of the very fundamental assumptions

that are made in the world of psychiatry

particularly with pharmaceutical

interactions or pharmaceutical

prescriptions and that's really exciting

to me because

I think there is an argument to be made

that you can address certain root causes

and there are different explanations for

this ghoul Dolan who's now at UC

Berkeley she was at Johns Hopkins talks

about the reopening of critical periods

for development. So you could

potentially use psychedelics for

stroke patients who are trying to

relearn motor control. So I would say

that those are are broadly kind of the

the three pillars. There's one other

that I'm

digging into that I think could end up

being very very interesting overall.

This is one that is sort of TBD.

Personally I am experimenting with it

but Vegas nerve stimulation. There is a

sea of [ __ ] floating around related

to Vegas nerve stimulation. The vast

majority of what you'll bump into is

pseudoscientific nonsense.

>> So, if I'd never heard about Vegas nerve

stimulation before, how would you

>> Yeah, I can explain it. [clears throat]

>> Yeah.

>> All right. So, the Vegas nerve is a bit

of a misnomer because they're actually

two bundles of nerves that travel down

from around your brain stem down either

side of the neck, kind of where you

would feel your pulse. It's right

alongside the corateed artery.

>> Mh. And you can think of them as almost

transatlantic cables. So you don't have

you have two primary vag nerves,

but there are about a 100,000 fibers in

each of them. And we only know what a

tiny fraction of those do. They then

travel down and they intervate and touch

pretty much everything you can imagine,

including your gut. And there's some

very interesting communication between

the gut microbiome and the brain. visa v

the Vegas nerve. It's wild. And the most

credible voice that I found in

the world of Vegas nerve stimulation

or VNS for short science is a guy named

Dr. Brian Tracy, T R A C Y. He wrote a

book called The Great Nerve, which is a

very good introductory read on all of

this. One of the most heavily cited

scientists of the last 30 years. He's

incredibly credible. and

he co-founded a company I want to say at

least 10 years ago or 11 years ago was

involved at least as a as a primary

scientific adviser for an implant. The

implant is about the size of a omega-3

fish oil capsule gets implanted right in

the neck. So surgical procedure but

pretty minor and that has just been

approved. It was the cover of the New

York Times a few weeks ago for

rheumatoid arthritis. And the before and

after that you see in some of these

conditions again is something straight

out of science fiction. You see someone

who's been mostly bedridden, chronic

fatigue, can't hold a job, struggling to

interact with their kids, has this

procedure, and then like two weeks later

they're running up a flight of stairs to

catch a train on a trip to Europe and

have the problem of too much energy. It

seems to have broad potential

application to autoimmune conditions. So

you might think of say a Crohn's disease

or IBS.

It seems to have applications

to

significantly enhancing HRV

heart rate variability. So I have a

friend who for the longest time he's

former tier one operator military. He's

got a lot of sympathetic overdrive. So

he had trouble sleeping and he tried

all sorts of sophisticated breathing

programs which can help. He tried cold

exposure which can help but those were

all incremental gains on his HRV maybe

improved 10 to 15% lots of meditation

twice a day 10 to 15%. Used vag nerve

stimulation for

somewhere between two and four weeks

tripled his HRV.

>> What?

>> Yeah, tripled.

>> How did he stimulate his vag nerve? Was

it like

>> this? This is where we get into some

controversial territory.

All right. So, the device he used is

it is a device. It's called Gamma Core.

It's by prescription. It is applied to

the neck. It provides

electrical stimulation for

2 minutes at a time. I believe it's very

very minimal. It's 2 minutes twice a

day. I want to say maybe it's 5 minutes

twice a day. And that seems to have just

a a downstream collection of benefits or

potential benefits. Most of the research

for gamore is for I believe migraines

andor cluster headaches in terms of

published literature or option B which

has a lot more in terms of published

studies would be uh oricuricular so ear

stimulation

uh and that's stimulating something

called the simba conscia right here this

very particular location and so you

apply stimulation to the ear I'm

experimenting with both the ear and also

the neck. I would say Vegas nerve

stimulation has top of mind

access right now for me in terms of

interest.

>> I bought this Bond Charge face mask,

this light panel for my girlfriend for

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So when they asked if they could sponsor

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My favorite products are the red light

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I'll tell you what, it scares the hell

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I asked my assistant Sophie to find me a

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Simplysafe. Before the Diary of SEO was

what it is today, it was just an idea.

And it started with me, a cheap plug-in

microphone, and my Mac right here. And I

have to say, when I first had the idea

for the Diary of a CEO, my thinking was

that the world might want to see into

the diaries of some of the most

interesting, successful people really in

high places that were doing interesting

things. So, after recording that first

episode under my duvet, I sat on my Mac,

which is from our sponsor Apple, and

spent hours editing and eventually

uploaded it. And honestly, I thought

that would probably be it. But a couple

of my friends said they enjoyed it. So,

I kept on recording. And over time, the

microphone has changed and we now have

this incredible setup here. But the

thing that has stayed the same is I'm

still using the Mac. Even today, my

entire team across our studio still uses

the Mac. Our first few episodes maybe

had tens of people listening, but now

tens of millions of people tune in all

over the world, which is still

absolutely crazy to me. So, if there is

an idea that keeps tapping you on the

shoulder, this is your sign to start.

Your great ideas start on Mac. And you

can find out more at apple.com/mack.

Because of what you do and because of

the way that you are in terms of your

broad curiosity and the way that you

think and the way that you learn, I have

to ask you the question, what is it that

you see coming down the pipe? Like

coming down the line in terms of macro

trends in it's probably makes sense for

us to just stick with health for a

second, but you've talked about Vegas

enough. Is there anything else that you

think 10 years from now everybody's

going to be doing

>> but they're not currently doing

>> or thinking about? One of them I'll

throw out there is something I've been

thinking about is air quality. I think I

see a rise in people's concern about CO2

levels and also outside air quality. So

I imagine I'll be wearing some kind of

device or my iPhone will be telling me

about the air quality in the room or

outside.

>> Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me. I think

bioelectric medicine is a big category.

So whether it's accelerated TMS or

focused ultrasound

uh where you might take something that

looks like a hockey puck and put it over

your your liver for instance or

spleen uh to affect various things. uh

using microchips over pills I think is

is is a is going to be a huge growth

area and that we'll realize more and

more how much is dependent on the immune

reflex and different types of

communication mediated by electricity uh

that can be affected by external or

internal devices like an implant. So for

instance, I'll give you a wild factoid

which is people may have heard the story

which is based on real science where you

transplant the microbiome from say obese

mice into lean mice and those lean mice

then become obese just by transplanting

m the gut microbiome.

If you sever the vagus nerve before you

do the transplant that doesn't happen.

They don't become obese. So what's

happening there? It would seem that the

microbiome is communicating with the

brain viv the vagus nerve. And when you

sever something experimentally in that

way or bladed or whatever,

often times this might seem paradoxical,

but you can achieve similar effects with

stimulation that you can with severing.

And

I think many of the assumptions that we

have currently which form the bedrock of

our quote unquote understanding of

mental illness and so on are just going

to be completely false. They're going to

be completely untenable within 10 years.

A lot of that I think is going to be

driven by a better understanding of the

body electric. It will be driven by

better understanding of

how

fuel utilization in the brain drives

many different psychiatric conditions

that can be mitigated or completely

addressed by say providing an alternate

fuel source instead of glucose ketones,

right? That would be just kind of a

simple example. But there's a huge huge

compliance issue with the ketogenic

diet, right? People don't want to do it

for [snorts] a lot of good reasons. So,

how do you get people to stick with it?

Well, maybe there are other options

for achieving ketogenic like effects

such as systemic anti-inflammation with

the use of electricity instead of diet.

Right?

I think that's possible and I've

invested in a few companies that are

aiming to do that. uh which is very

exciting because it means that you might

have options for affecting brain

function that do not require you to take

molecules that get into your brain

directly.

>> Mhm.

>> That's really exciting. So bioelectric

medicine I think is going to be a very

exciting space to watch and there are a

lot of researchers doing some wild stuff

with bioelectric medicine. [gasps]

So we'll see where it goes. Where are

you today in terms of your what's

guiding you at the moment in this season

of your life? Do you what are your big

goals? Are you are you aspiring towards

anything in particular?

>> It's relationships. It's uh looking

forward to the next big chapter for me

which would almost certainly it not

almost certainly be partner, family, all

of that. I mean another startup's not

going to make any difference to my life.

You know, another podcast. I love all

those things. I love startups. I love

the podcast. I love the books. But we're

at the

squeezing out of marginal gains at this

point.

>> Are you married or

>> I'm not married. Don't have any kids

that I'm aware of.

>> You're aware of

>> But uh dating a lovely woman right now.

Very excited about it.

>> Do you think it's quite strange that a

lot of podcasters don't seem to be like

I'm not married. Yeah.

>> And I don't have any kids yet.

>> Yeah.

>> Um I've just turned 33. But so many of

the big podcasters don't seem to have

kids or be married other than really

Rogan.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> Someone tweeted about the other day. I

was like, [laughter] "Oh, fuck."

>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I think that

I'm not I'm not pointing fingers at you,

but I but I know quite a few of these

guys. If we're talking about guys, u I I

mean, I know a bunch of female

podcasters as well. Um quite a few of

which are married. Uh, but on the male

side, I will say, you know, if you're a

good-looking guy and you're putting

videos on YouTube,

your DM inbound and your plethora of

temptation that you need to resist is

going to make remaining single very

attractive. And [laughter]

that's true for a lot of these guys. So,

I don't think there's a mystery to be

solved. In other words, it's like if

they go on the dating apps, it's just

like shooting fish in a barrel. And

I I don't think ultimately that the

dating apps, despite what they might

say, are designed to be deleted. I do

not believe that. They are casinos

intended to keep you in the casino.

>> Yeah.

>> It's just follow the money. Follow the

subscription plans.

>> Well, you talk about the paradox of

choice.

>> Yeah. And

so there are times and I think this is

probably misplaced envy where I'm like,

you know, maybe there was something to

arranged marriages, you know, and this

whole idea of like soulmate romantic

love driving everything is a relatively

new invention.

>> Mhm.

>> On the scale of human history. Uh now

would I want someone deciding who I

marry and have kids with? Not

particularly. But there is a certain

simplicity to it that I find enviable

when you end up in the modern digital

casinos of dating apps where

yes, that person was an eight out of 10,

but man, that nine or 10 is just right

around the corner. I know it's just a

few thousand swipes away.

>> Yeah.

>> And and you get the variable reward at

least if you're like a a healthy,

sexually vigorous male.

>> [snorts]

>> I'm sure for women as well. I just think

that men tend to think with their

smaller head a lot more often. Uh you're

going to get these incredible dopamine

hits of variable reward. It's just like

dog training, but you're training

yourself with the dating app to continue

using the dating app

>> by getting these Scooby snacks in terms

of, you know, [laughter] fill in the

blank with your imagination. Uh,

I don't meet all I have not met a single

person who is like, I love dating apps.

>> No one.

>> I have not met a single person. And yet,

right, what does the crack addict want?

>> More crack. And they might say, I just

need one more hit. That's not how it

works.

>> Yeah. [laughter]

>> So, there is, I think, a lot to be said

for applying positive constraints,

right?

>> Scared to be single again. I just the

way I look out at the the current

mechanism of finding someone these

dating apps and I just think and also I

do understand it would be a significant

distraction from whatever I'm doing

here.

>> Oh, for sure.

>> Can you imagine me being in New York

City tonight single and like uh and

having the evening off and what what

would go through my head and and then

you'd have to go on a date with someone.

You've got to do all the small talk

stuff. I got out the game before the

game like began. Yeah.

>> Like seven years ago I the game. I saw

this this tweet from this I think it was

a Vietnamese woman who said, you know, I

wonder if it wasn't Gen X, it was like,

I wonder if X, Y, and Z people of this

generation are looking at dating apps

and thinking, wow, we got the last

chopper out of N.

>> Literally, literally.

>> And

>> oh my god,

>> that's not far from the truth. Uh,

paradox of choice is a real problem.

People think it's a quality problem of

abundance. I'm not convinced that that's

true. No way. It's not poss I have so

many clo My friends that struggle with

dating the most, date the most.

>> Yeah, sure.

>> I've got two or three friends that I can

think of. I won't name them, but two of

them are women and one of them is a guy.

They do 50 between 50 and 100 dates a

year.

>> Yeah.

>> And they're just convinced that it's

through lack of lack of option. And I

just it's impossible. But, you know,

>> yeah, I'm uh very happy to be off the

dating apps. I was on the dating apps

for 2 or 3 years and it was just

[laughter]

>> it is a part-time slash full-time job.

>> We have a a closing tradition on this

podcast where the last guest leaves a

question for the next guest not knowing

who they're leaving it for. And your you

know the person who wrote your question

sat there I kid you not for 30 minutes

in total silence thinking about these

two three four five six seven eight

words.

>> Oh wow.

>> They sat there for I've never seen

anything like it.

>> All right. and the eight words that they

wrote.

>> Oh man, [laughter]

>> I know, right?

>> That's nine words.

>> What is your favorite color today?

>> Can you imagine? [laughter]

>> Yeah. What's your favorite sandwich? No,

I'm joking. Um, how would you spend your

final day on Earth?

>> With my closest friends and family? No

doubt.

It wouldn't be pizza. It wouldn't be I

mean maybe it involves pizza, but it

would be

telling the people I love that I love

them and spending time with them.

Doesn't need to be anything fancy. Could

be sitting on a porch on a rocking

chair. And that might seem like a trit

answer, but I am putting that into

practice every year with periods of time

that are blocked out for this. So, I'm

not waiting until my last day, but last

day certainly wouldn't be dating apps.

[laughter]

wouldn't be an opium bender.

Uh it would be it would be time with my

my absolute closest friends and family.

And I'll add uh elaboration on the past

year review when I'm looking at

relationships

before investing in new relationships. I

look at my top say five to 10

relationships and ask myself did I spend

the amount of time I would want to spend

with these people last year? And if the

answer is no, I always reinvest in those

people and only the overflow

gets allocated to new relationships. I

really focus on the tried andrue proven

relationships with deep levels of trust

over long periods of time.

>> In terms of systems, you've put have you

put a system in place to make sure that

life doesn't get in the way of those

people coming together? Yeah. I mean,

for 25 plus years, I've had a

annual reunion around my birthday every

year in the summer where all of my or

those who can make it, but incredibly

old friends show up. They know it's on

the calendar. It's roughly the same date

every year. And they fly in from all

over the country, all over the world.

And it has nothing to do with my

birthday. It's just a reunion of

friends.

>> Tim, thank you. Thank you for several

reasons. I think the first reason is

you're one of the I said to you before

one of the founding fathers of what we

do here and if it wasn't for people like

yourself and Joe there is a 0% chance I

think that people like me would be doing

what we do now and that's given us so

much there's really really like a very

extremely low chance that if people like

you hadn't taken the risk and created a

blueprint and shown that it was like an

effective medium and the long form was

interesting and everything that you you

guys proved there's no chance that

people like with me would exist and So I

whenever I meet people like you that I I

consider to have to be standing on the

shoulders of on or have stolen a

blueprint on I feel like I am obliged to

say thank you because you've created but

it's true. It's true.

>> Yeah. And I was inspired also by people

who preceded me right when I did the

launch for the 4-Hour chef in 2012 with

going on Joe Rogan and Mark Marin and

Nerdist and so on. Like those guys also

showed me that something interesting was

a foot.

>> So uh you're 33 you said

>> 33.

>> Yeah. You got a lot of runway, man.

You're in a good position.

>> We'll see. We'll see what happens. I'll

add one last thing that I neglected to

mention earlier, but in terms of

productivity, and we're talking about

weekly architecture, I think everyone

should put as a challenge for

themselves,

>> particularly if they're an entrepreneur,

a 4-week mini retirement once a year

where you are unavailable. you are off

the grid. No laptop, no phone outside of

maybe Uber and Google Maps and Open

Table where [snorts] you are literally

completely unavailable. And the reason I

recommend that there are a few. Number

one, it's going to allow you to play the

long game at high intensity having that

de loing phase. The second is it will

force you to improve all of your

policies, rules, guidelines for

autonomous decision-m by employees,

etc., etc. It'll force you to clarify

all of that on a regular basis. So, when

you come back, all of those systems

improvements will endure beyond the mini

retirement, but it's a forcing function.

Mhm.

>> Uh it [clears throat] also forces you to

take a very close look at the non-b

businessiness interests that you have

either maintained or cultivated or let

atrophy in complete disuse. And if you

end up having a slight panic attack

because you don't know what to do with

your time, that's a great wakeup call.

You need some other things to offset the

type A maniacal focus on chasing that

rabbit around the greyhound drag.

>> Amen.

>> Thank you, Tim. Thanks, man. Thank you

so much.

>> If there's anything we need, it is

connection, especially in the world

we're living in today. And that is

exactly why we created these

conversation cards. Because on this

show, when I sit here with my guests and

have those deep, intimate conversations,

this remarkable thing happens time and

time again. We feel deeply connected to

each other. At the end of every episode,

the guest I'm interviewing leaves a

question for the next guest, and we've

turned them into these conversation

cards, and we've added these twist cards

to make your conversations even more

interesting. And there are so many more

twists along the way with the

conversation cards. This is the brand

new edition and for the first time ever,

I've added to the pack this gold card

which is an exclusive question from me.

But I'm only putting the gold cards in

the first run of conversation cards. So

get yours now before the limited edition

gold cards are all gone. Head to the

link in the description below.

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