One of your current projects is called

The No Book. Um

>> Yeah.

>> And uh you uh the book, as Tim has uh

pointed out, may come out in 10 years

because he's working on it slowly, but

he has released a couple of chapters

online and I've read at least one of

them. Um and it's really interesting. Um

uh so before I say too much, maybe you

could describe what is the notebook and

and why are you writing it if if only

slowly.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I have an 800page draft

right now, so it's going to need to get

whittleled down a little bit. But the

notebook started something like boy 6

years ago where I noticed a lot of

people in my audience, my listeners, my

readers struggling with focus and saying

no. Because fundamentally

like the the road to where you want to

be in life is

sort of the the Wizard of Oz, you know,

golden brick road is saying yes to a few

things. A few things, right? There are

really there are just a few things you

have to get right. And then the the

guardrails for that are that's the yes

road and it's very few things. the

guardrails for that are no, you have to

say no the entire way. And

I was I was writing this book. I reached

out to a bunch of my my friends. These

are very accomplished friends in this

case to ask them for their

recommendations. I thought they would

help me write this thing and they were

like, "Oh my god, are you kidding me?

Like this is the biggest pain in my

life. Please send me an early copy when

you can." So my friends were there were

there were a few who were actually very

helpful, but the vast majority were

like, "Oh my god, I thought that life

was going to get easier. It has only

gotten harder with respect to saying

no." And uh and I it just became this

massive project. So I put it I put it on

the back burner. And then a friend of

mine, Neil Strauss, some people might

recognize that name. He's written

something like 10 New York Times

bestsellers. He wrote The Dirt. He's

written these biographies of Mley Crew

and like all these celebrities. and he

also wrote The Game and Emergency and

many other books. And he's terrible at

saying no, it turns out. And he was

busting my balls about not writing this

book. And he kept harassing me about

finishing it. And he was actually kind

of creating a kurfuffle over a group

dinner after a few drinks. And I was

just like, "Neil, if you want to read

this book so badly, why don't you just

help me finish writing it?" And I

thought that put it to bed. And then the

next day when he we all sobered up, he

was like, you know, if you're serious,

well, we talk about it. And

at the same time, I was noticing with

social media, certainly with AI, it's

going to get a thousand times worse. The

ability, well, first of all, like the

external forces that want to distract

you are almost

unbeatable. I mean, it's it's it's

incredible how sophisticated they are.

Secondly, the way that enables self

interruption and distraction is

something that humanity has never seen

before.

And there is this incredible pain in

terms of paradox of choice, right? What

should I do? Who should I listen to?

What should I watch? What should I pay

attention to? That is fracturing the

psyches of people. And this, by the way,

does not discriminate geographically,

does not discriminate economically. It's

like up and down the chain, left, right,

front, center, everywhere. Uh, so I the

problems just seem to be getting bigger

and bigger and bigger. So wrote this

book with Neil basically as the the

student. And what's what's fun about it,

I think it's my most entertaining and

hilarious book in a way because

I'm giving Neil these assignments and

then he'll try them, but he'll be like

passive aggressive and he'll screw one

up or he like he'll he'll actually not

do 50% of the assignment and then I'll

follow up and he'll have all this guilt.

But we have real examples of like emails

he tried to send, text messages he's

trying to send. He's trying everything

in the book and learning as he goes. And

I would say uh there are a few people

who have proof read the whole thing and

they proof read it like a year ago and

they've they've come back and and these

are fans of my stuff who've read my

other books and they're like this book

has had a huge impact on my life and

they still give me examples. So to to

then answer the question of well what

exactly is the book talking about? The

book is talking about how to say no in a

world of compulsive yes. Right? But what

I've what I've what's important to note

about this is that this is also true

with the 4-hour body and like why that

worked for so many people when other

books kind of diet exercise books had

failed. It's not enough to just have a

couple of index cards or templates for

doing exercise for saying no. If that

would have worked it would have worked

already, right?

And sure, I can give examples, and I

give tons of examples of lines that are

helpful for saying no, like Martha Beck,

who is like Oprah Winfreyy's life coach

and is an amazing woman in her own right

for a lot of reasons. U she turned me

down for something and I include these

real nos, right? Cuz I kept my favorite

declines and people like rejections over

10 years and and so I share a bunch of

them. And she said to me, "I really wish

I could, but I can't do the to life

Tetris." Right? I'm like, "Do the to

life Tetris." And I was like, "Wow, that

is so good. You're not explaining.

You're not defending. You're not giving

a bunch of stuff that someone can try to

negotiate around. It's just like, hey, I

really wish I could. I just can't do

life Tetris." And so, I give examples

like that, but that is not enough. Uh

once you start really digging into why

people have trouble saying no, it's not

only because they lack templates. It's

because of certain core beliefs,

which are thoughts we take to be true to

kind of quote Byron Katy

and philosophies they have that they're

not even aware of that make it almost

impossible to say no, right? And that

could relate to FOMO. It could be

related to a very scarcity- minded

limited number of opportunities, right?

A belief that you can't generate

opportunities yourself. You have to wait

for things to come as inbound. It could

relate to and I hit these very early on

and actually I think they're in the

sample chapters that people can get. Uh

if if people go to tim.blog/nobook,

so tim.blog is the actual URL/nowbook,

one word. I think it's like 30 or 40

pages of the book that will get into

this, but a lot of folks will say, "I'm

too nice for that." Okay, we unpack that

because there's a lot there, right? Must

be nice for Tim or fill in the blank

because they're already successful. I

don't have that luxury, right? Okay,

well, let's actually double click on

that and start to interrogate some of

these beliefs and on and on and on. So

saying no in a durable way, like really

developing a toolkit, which as far as

I'm concerned is like a

self-preservation necessity. Now, when I

first started it 6 years ago, I was

like, if people really want to get kind

of 10x results in their life, and

continue to apply the things from the

4-hour work like 8020, etc., they really

need to have a reliable tool here for

saying no. But now looking at social

media AI, social media enabled AI, blah

blah blah blah blah. What it's going to

do to inboxes, messaging, etc. with

personalization, spam, you fill in the

blank that are indistinguishable from

humans. Uh this is it's this is like

knowing how to breathe. As far as I'm

concerned, you have to have a toolkit

like this. You're just going to get

you're going to be roadkill, I think.

And I that sounds probably very

dramatic, but it's like I'm sitting in

Silicon Valley right now for my first

trip here for a few weeks um of in

duration in like 8 years. I'm telling

you guys, the stuff that's coming is

going to be amazing. It's going to be

incredible. It's also just going to be

it's going to be catastrophic for I

think a lot of minds that are unprepared

with the proper toolkits. So saying no

is important.

>> Agreed. And it's a huge struggle for me.

You have a beautiful phrase in your book

uh promiscuous over commitment and I um

am really really guilty of that. You

also there's another nice phrase you you

you say the book will help you build a

benevolent failank uh protective wall of

troops to guard your goals. Uh

we don't have time to talk about all of

the tools in there but is there a tool

in particular you think that is that

would be very very powerful for people?

>> Yes absolutely. Um, so there a lot of

folks have perhaps heard the apocryphal

story of and I think I I I give proper

credit in the book and this is one of

the chapters that people can get. Um, so

there's plenty of value that people get

from the from the free stuff, but I mean

I'm not even selling it yet, so maybe

I'll give away more. But the uh the the

one of the culprits, one of the biggest

causal factors for why people have

trouble saying no is they don't have big

enough yeses to defend.

>> Right? And for instance, if you don't

have like if you had a brand new child,

if you had or someone you loved, god

forbid, had a serious cancer diagnosis,

if you had tiger by the tail and knew

that you were working on a business, I'm

using an extreme example on purpose that

could be worth billions of dollars, you

would not have trouble saying no to

things,

right? And so then like we go back to

the other end of the spectrum. It's

like, well, if you don't have really

clearly defined big yeses

that get you excited that have the

potential for huge payoff, not

necessarily financially,

and you're kind of searching around your

inbox for things to answer, right? When

people send you an invite to a dinner or

they want to have coffee to pick your

brain or it could be anything, a costume

party you don't want to go to. That's a

real example from Neil actually.

And

you're going to say yes because what's

scarier than having lots of little o

promiscuous overcommitments? It's a big

void.

>> All right. So the apocryphal story that

I was hinting at um is the story of the

professor who comes in and this I I want

to say this was from originally Steven

Cvy or maybe Steven Cvy adapted it.

>> The seven habits of highly effective

people I believe was the book

>> and uh it might have been in his

teaching and not in the books themselves

but the the story is along these lines.

professor goes in and he puts out on the

desk in front of the students like a

large mason jar, a handful of big rocks,

right? Like like three or four, a bunch

of gravel and then a bunch of sand. And

he challenges the students, asks them

first how they would fit as much as

possible into the mason jar. And they

try different approaches. So if you put

in the sand first, then you get a little

bit of gravel in. can't fit the rocks.

Okay. Well, ditto. If you put the gravel

in first, then you put in the sand,

maybe you fit one rock. Okay. And

ultimately,

the lesson is you have to put in the big

rocks first, then the gravel fits around

that, and then you can fit in the sand.

In the version that I tell, I make a I I

make a modification to that and I say no

matter what they do, there's still sand

left over on the table. And I think the

lesson is if you're looking at this in

terms of commitments, right? The big

rocks are those kind of life-changing

yeses, the few things you need to

protect on that golden road to get

really where you want to be. Then the

gravel to me are like the smaller but

critical things you need to do. Got to

file your taxes, got to do A, B, or C.

And then the sand is all that extraneous

stuff, mostly distractions. You can fit

some of it, but if you schedule all that

stuff first, it's going to crowd out the

gravel or it's certainly at the very

least going to crowd out all the big

yeses, right? And so in the in the

sample chapters, I just walk people

through how I do this past year review,

right? and like how I actually pick the

big yeses because the the book on no

is equally a book on h to answer the

question how the hell in a world of

infinite options in a world of

temptation around every corner do you

pick a few things to focus on that are

really high leverage how do you do it

like that seems like a it's a simple

question, but it's actually a very hard

question to answer. Um, and so I would

say that if you're having trouble saying

no, underneath that probably is the fact

that you don't have a you don't have big

enough yeses that are worth defending.

Uh, and then there's a lot that leads

from that, right? There are ways how do

you commit to a yes and ensure against

reneggging or something else? Um, and

there's also like this is intended to be

hopefully like all of my books a very

practical book, right? So, what happens

when you screw up, right? There's an

entire chapter on how to renegotiate

commitments after you have already

overcommitted because guess what? If you

have that tendency, you're going to

overcommit. You're going to look at your

calendar for the next few weeks or month

and say, "Good lord, I'm screwed."

And then what do you do? you're going to

have to have some very potentially

uncomfortable conversations. So, we're

learning to renegotiate commitments is

also an art form that is going to be

included in it. Uh, but fundamentally,

it's it's

big yeses worth defending.