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2:07

Hello boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome

2:09

to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Where

2:11

does my job to deconstruct world class performers of

2:13

all different types, to tease out routines, habits, and

2:15

so on that you can apply to your own

2:17

life. This is a special

2:19

in between episode which serves as a recap

2:21

of the episodes from the last month. It

2:24

features a short clip from each conversation in

2:26

one place so you can jump around, get

2:28

a feel for both the episode and the

2:30

guest and then you can always dig deeper

2:33

by going to one of those episodes. View

2:35

this episode as a buffet to whet your

2:37

appetite. It's a lot of fun, we had

2:39

fun putting it together and for the full

2:42

list of the guests featured today, see the

2:44

episode's description probably right below where we press

2:46

play in your podcast app or as usual

2:49

you can head to tim.blog slash podcast and

2:51

find all the details there. Please

2:53

enjoy. Here's

2:58

the new book, The New Book

3:01

of Computer Science at Georgetown University

3:03

and the New York Times bestselling author

3:05

of Deep Work. His new

3:08

book is Slow Productivity, The

3:10

Lost Art of Accomplishment Without

3:13

Burnout. Could

3:17

you give some examples old and

3:20

new of people who in your

3:22

mind exemplify slow productivity? I

3:24

was motivated by slow food

3:27

as an example where they look back

3:29

to traditional cuisines where cultures had evolved

3:31

over generation and generation like what's the

3:33

right way to eat in this region

3:35

of Italy and the slow food movement

3:37

would look back at that for

3:39

inspiration. I look back at what I call

3:42

traditional knowledge workers. So people who

3:44

did things with their brain but not

3:46

the normal 1950s and onward I'm in an

3:48

office or working at a computer screen so

3:50

like artists and philosophers, scientists. The

3:53

original knowledge workers they tended to have a

3:55

lot more freedom and autonomy than we did

3:57

today so I said great we can study.

3:59

them to see what do they gravitate towards

4:02

in terms of how they approach their structured,

4:04

their really important work because they had freedom

4:06

and flexibility so we can identify what matters

4:09

and then adapt that to the sort of modern

4:11

life. So a lot of my examples are these

4:13

traditional knowledge workers. So

4:15

one of the early examples is

4:18

Isaac Newton. And I

4:20

said, okay, we all know he wrote this

4:22

great master work, the Principia. This

4:25

is just invented in that as part of

4:27

the effort to specify the laws of gravity,

4:29

the gift celestial order to the way that

4:31

the cosmos work. He wrote

4:33

that thing over decades, decades. He

4:36

would go and do other things and come back. It

4:38

wasn't this frantic push until it's done, but

4:41

no one remembers how long

4:43

he spent working on that. They're

4:45

just like, yeah, that thing changed the way we

4:47

understand the world. Lin-Manuel Miranda with his first play

4:49

in the Heights the same way. I do his

4:51

whole story. That's a seven year odyssey from

4:54

when he first performs his first version

4:56

of that play as a student play,

4:58

which wasn't very good, to when it

5:00

first goes on to a professional stage,

5:02

his pre-Broadway debut. That's a seven

5:04

year period. And he's working on it that he's not.

5:07

He's working on it again and he's not. We

5:10

don't know about that now. We're just like, oh yeah, his first play

5:12

won a lot of Grammys and he did Hamilton. He's

5:14

like a really good playwright. Right. If

5:16

you read Wikipedia, you're like, oh, you don't realize

5:18

the synopsis in one sentence. His dad told him.

5:20

He left when he graduated from college. His dad

5:23

was like, you really should go to law school.

5:25

He took a job as a substitute teacher. He

5:27

was spending a lot of time with a freestyle

5:30

rap troupe called

5:33

Love Supreme that would travel

5:35

around doing freestyle rap shows. So if

5:37

you zoomed in on a particular day

5:39

in the almost decade that

5:41

Lin-Manuel Miranda was working on in the Heights, he'd

5:43

be like, man, you're so lazy. You're not even

5:45

working on your thing. Like what's going on? Why

5:47

aren't you getting after it? Why aren't

5:50

you crushing it? How do those

5:52

things take longer? I use Georgia O'Keeffe

5:54

as an example of seasonality, that her

5:56

productivity as an artist didn't really pick

5:58

up until she... began saying, you know

6:01

what, in the summers I'm going with Alfred Stieglitz,

6:03

we're going the Lake George. And

6:05

I'm going to sit there in a Santee that she

6:08

called it the Santee. It was an outbuilding near the

6:10

lake. I'm just going to paint and be inspired. And

6:12

then I'll come back after the summer and finish the

6:14

artwork and show them and do all the other sorts

6:16

of stuff. Most productive years of

6:19

her life. By actually slowing down for

6:21

a season every year, her productivity exploded.

6:23

She became one of the most famous

6:25

early modernists of that whole era of

6:27

painting. So we see those examples. Marie

6:29

Curie at the pinnacle of

6:31

about to discover in pitchblend, the substance

6:34

she's studying, about to isolate radioactivity and

6:36

win her first of two Nobel Prizes

6:39

goes to France with her family on vacation for two

6:41

months. In the moment you're like, what are you doing?

6:43

You got to be getting after, you got to be crushing it. But we don't

6:46

see that now. We're like, yeah, she was great.

6:48

She won two Nobel Prizes. Like, way to go. She

6:51

wasn't part of the hustle culture. There was no hustle

6:53

culture. That's the interesting thing. When you go back and

6:55

study people producing things of

6:57

real value using their

6:59

brain, they were smart and they were

7:02

dedicated and they worked really hard, but

7:04

they didn't hustle. And they didn't

7:06

work 10 hour days, day after

7:08

day. They didn't work all out year round.

7:11

They didn't push, push, push until this thing

7:13

was done. It was a

7:15

more natural variation. They had less on their

7:17

plate at the same time and they glued

7:19

it all together by obsessing over quality. That's

7:21

the slow productivity approach. It still produces stuff

7:23

that you're really proud of, but

7:26

it doesn't burn you out and it doesn't

7:28

leave you in this weird out of sync balance where

7:30

work is taking up almost all of your time. Next

7:36

up, Claire Hughes Johnson,

7:39

author of Scaling People, Tactics

7:41

for Management and Company Building

7:44

and former chief operating officer

7:46

of Stripe, where she scaled the

7:48

company from roughly 160 to 6,000 plus employees. Fred

8:00

Kaufman and victim versus player. Can you

8:02

explain what this is? I

8:04

love this one because I think it's

8:06

so simplifying and clarifying really

8:09

about, are you managing someone or

8:11

interacting with someone who has

8:14

agency, takes responsibility. Fred,

8:16

when he introduces this framework, tells the

8:18

story of how young children, and he's the,

8:20

I think he has six or seven children

8:23

by the way, but how young children when

8:25

something has happened that they know is

8:28

bad, will not take responsibility.

8:30

So they will say things like the coat

8:32

is at school. So

8:34

not, I left my coat at school. Right.

8:37

A thing has happened. Things have happened. The toy

8:40

is broken. You're like, well, did

8:42

you break it? So he has this

8:44

really disarming way of introducing this concept, which is we're

8:46

all laughing just like you and I were like, ha

8:48

ha, the toy is broken. But then

8:50

he's like, okay, now let's talk about if one

8:53

of your direct reports came to you and said, the

8:55

report was not written. Yeah. You're

8:57

like the report that you were meant to write,

8:59

but how it actually manifests is

9:01

you're supposed to write some report up or some summary

9:04

of a meeting. And you say, oh, tell me where

9:06

that is. And the player says,

9:09

completely my fault. I had planned to get it

9:11

to you by five o'clock yesterday. I

9:13

prioritized this emergency that came up,

9:15

didn't tell you my bad. Can

9:18

we renegotiate? Can I get it to you at five o'clock today?

9:20

And you're like, fine. I wish you'd told me that you weren't

9:22

going to get it. The

9:24

victim says, let me tell you about that

9:27

report. Lucy owes me

9:29

her notes and I can't

9:31

finish it without Lucy and Lucy, you

9:33

know, super slow at getting her notes.

9:35

And I'm sorry, I don't know when I'm

9:37

going to get it. But that actually is pretty

9:39

common. People are like, well, this other person

9:42

that I'm depending on and therefore I

9:44

have no responsibility. And they're a victim

9:46

and they're going to play the victim. And

9:48

I think that's a very hard person

9:50

to coach. How much do

9:53

you have to select that in your hiring process

9:55

versus coach people from one side to the

9:58

other? Have you had much success or seen

10:00

much? success in moving people from

10:02

the victim's side to the player side?

10:05

And that's a bit of a leading question by my tone, I guess. I

10:08

suspect there are a lot of instances where

10:10

that's hard, but in

10:13

the success cases, what does

10:15

that coaching process look like? I've

10:18

seen both. I feel like with people who

10:20

are earlier in their career, they're more... I'm

10:22

all growth mindset, but they're a little more

10:24

moldable and you can actually coach people

10:26

out of this as like a way of operating. If

10:29

they're later in their career, it's a

10:31

little more ingrained and it's quite hard, especially

10:33

because they tend to not be aware of

10:35

it because they've somehow been successful operating

10:38

in that mode. And so they're kind of like, what

10:40

are you saying? You see leaders who, and

10:42

you know how they behave to him is they say, well,

10:44

if it's not under my direct control, then

10:47

I am not responsible. And

10:49

so they become empire builders and

10:52

some organizations let them get away with it.

10:54

They're like, sure, you can have all the

10:56

infrastructure teams then. Like it becomes this weird

10:58

failing upward problem where people say, well, if

11:01

I can control it, I'll take responsibility. If

11:03

it's within my house, then I'll

11:05

take responsibility. So people satisfy

11:07

that checkbox by giving them more and more resources.

11:09

What a nightmare. Exactly. And

11:11

it becomes this weird expanded scope of this

11:14

person who actually doesn't take responsibility. It's a

11:16

pattern I've seen. For people earlier

11:18

in their career, the easiest coaching

11:20

move you do, which I'm sure you've heard or someone's

11:22

done it to you, I've certainly had it done to

11:24

me. You're saying Lucy didn't send

11:26

me your notes and you're saying, what could you

11:28

have done differently? And you have

11:31

to let uncomfortable silence then. And

11:33

some people will then say, what

11:35

do you mean? Like, you're like, oh my gosh.

11:37

But some people will say, well,

11:39

I guess I could have helped

11:41

Lucy write the notes. So what I try to

11:43

do is stay in the discomfort, which is hard and

11:45

just sort of like, let's list out a few

11:47

things you could have done differently and not

11:49

be judgmental, like not judge the things. Just say what it

11:51

was. So you could have helped Lucy write the notes. You

11:54

could have set a deadline with her that was

11:56

ahead of your deadline. Put a deadline

11:59

in a sauna where people can. actually see it? You could

12:01

use a right.

12:19

Really what you're kind of gonna have to admit to

12:21

you is they're being a little

12:23

lazy. They're not helping others do the work. They're

12:25

not a good collaborator and that's

12:27

what I sometimes do with someone who's like, you know, if this is

12:29

a pattern, I say, you know, I see this pattern. Do you

12:31

see this pattern? Where you're waiting for

12:33

other people all the time. Tell me more

12:35

about why you think that's happening. Why

12:38

are people not delivering for you? And

12:40

the question is like, either it's because

12:42

they haven't figured out how to do

12:44

action items or accountability or be clear

12:46

about deadlines or there's someone people don't

12:48

like to work with. I always

12:50

call it like going meta. Like you're looking from the balcony

12:52

at the city, which is a term from adaptive leadership. Are

12:54

you on the balcony? Are you on the dance floor? And

12:56

if you're on the balcony, you try to get the person

12:59

up there with you. Say, why do you have

13:01

this pattern of people

13:03

not helping you get your work done?

13:05

And then I think of it as going to

13:07

the basement. I know this is I'm very visual person. So

13:10

we look down and they sort of if they acknowledge

13:12

it, they say, yeah, I guess I see that. And

13:14

I say, well, let's talk about a few examples. And

13:16

we come up with some examples. Then we go down

13:18

and we're in the scenario and I say, let's do

13:20

the five whys. I mean, everyone loves the five whys.

13:22

I'm like, why do you think Lucy didn't

13:24

send you the notes? Well, she's

13:26

not good at deadlines. Hmm. Okay. And then

13:28

this is a wonderful expression that I learned

13:30

from some coach. I had a million years.

13:32

Be that as it may, which is not

13:34

normal English language, but I don't know it

13:36

worked sort of like be that as it

13:38

may. Okay. Maybe Lucy is terrible at deadlines, but

13:41

why else? Well, I

13:43

didn't ask her to get it to me

13:45

at a specific time. Okay. So maybe there's the

13:47

thing. Why else? You know, and you're sort

13:49

of pushing them and sometimes not every time

13:51

they'll sort of say, well, I don't know

13:54

Lucy and I don't work that well together.

13:56

And you're like,

13:58

oh, say

14:00

more about that. What do you think is going on? And

14:03

of course by the way your left-hand column Tim

14:05

is it's because Lucy doesn't like you because

14:08

you blame her for all of

14:10

your missed deadlines. But

14:12

I can't say that because that person

14:14

is going to go from learning to barely in

14:16

learning mode. I'm trying to bring them along with

14:18

me and they're going to just shut down. And

14:21

by the way they may never admit that Lucy

14:23

doesn't like them because they blame

14:25

her for missed deadlines. But they're

14:27

gonna realize that their manager who's

14:29

me is not letting them off the hook.

14:32

If they can't get into an agency,

14:34

a player mindset, I'm a responsible

14:36

party for my work and others

14:38

then they are going to be off my team.

14:40

If I can't coach them out of it to

14:42

your point. There's two gaps that I think are

14:44

really hard. One is people who can't stop being

14:46

victims and the other gap

14:49

I call self-awareness gap where they think they

14:51

are the best in the world. I

14:53

once worked with this BD person who was like

14:55

I can negotiate a deal better than

14:57

anyone. And talk about not being

14:59

in a learning mindset. I'm like do you not

15:02

think we should get any outside

15:04

advice? I'm exaggerating a little bit

15:06

but really unaware that they had

15:08

any potential blind spot or had

15:10

never done a deal like this

15:12

deal. And I'm like how are

15:14

we gonna close this awareness gap because the people

15:16

around you are saying you are not the

15:18

best person to negotiate this deal. And

15:21

I'm trying to hand it to someone else and you're

15:23

like what you have no one better than me. You

15:25

know and that's a very hard gap to

15:27

close. Next

15:32

up William Urie, co-founder

15:35

of Harvard's program on negotiation,

15:37

co-author of Getting to Yes and

15:40

author of Getting Past No. His

15:42

new book is Possible How

15:45

We Survive and Thrive in an

15:47

Age of Conflict. They

16:00

were just going at it hammer and pong.

16:02

They were just dug into their positions. Egypt

16:04

demanded the entire Sinai back. Israel

16:06

wanted to keep a third. Menachem Begin

16:09

said, I'll pluck out my right eye and

16:11

cut off my right hand rather than surrender

16:13

a single settlement. They were just about to

16:15

give up. And then Ty

16:18

Vance remembered the memo in his briefcase. He

16:21

said to Carter, he said, well, why don't we try out

16:23

this idea for a one-text

16:25

process? And they tried it

16:27

out. And this is the way it

16:29

went. The Americans, instead of asking the

16:32

Egyptians and Israelis in the traditional way, the mediator

16:34

goes in and asks you to make a concession.

16:36

No one wants to make a concession. No one

16:39

wants to make the first concession because that'll signal

16:41

weakness for sure. And you know, beg

16:43

it. And so that said, I have to go back and consult

16:45

and it wasn't gonna go anywhere. So

16:47

the Americans said instead with a

16:49

one-text process, they said, don't make

16:51

any concessions. We understand what

16:53

your positions are. Just tell us what your

16:55

interests are. And they said, what do you

16:57

mean? It was, tell us what you really want. What are you really

16:59

concerned about? I mean, you're trying to draw a line in the sand,

17:02

but what's the underlying driver? What

17:04

is it you're really afraid of? What

17:06

are you concerned of? What do you

17:08

really want? And the Egyptians talked

17:10

about sovereignty. Sadat said, you know, this land has

17:12

been ours since the time of the pharaohs and

17:14

we want it back. And the

17:16

Israelis talked about security. You know, Egyptians

17:19

had attacked them four times in the previous 30

17:21

years across the Sinai. They didn't want that

17:24

happening again. So then the question

17:26

became not where do we draw a line

17:28

in the sand, but how do

17:30

we get Egyptian sovereignty and

17:33

Israeli security? And the Americans went

17:35

back and drafted up what's called, we call

17:37

it a one-text. It's a non-paper paper. It's very

17:39

low status. You've got coffee stains on it or

17:41

whatever it is. But it was an idea to

17:44

do both, to try and reconcile both interests,

17:47

to meet the interests of both. And it was

17:49

based on an idea, actually, the Egyptians had

17:51

surfaced, which was a demilitarized Sinai. A

17:53

Sinai where Egypt gets the entire

17:55

Sinai back, the flag

17:57

can fly everywhere, but it's demilitarized. Israel

18:00

gets security. And in this

18:02

context, demilitarized means there cannot be presence

18:05

of military forces? That's it. Egyptian tanks

18:07

can go nowhere. And basically, Americans, the

18:09

idea was to propose that the Americans

18:11

would put technical means, you put

18:13

a little multinational force in there, but

18:16

you could tell if a goat crossed, but

18:18

no armed forces there, exactly. Got

18:21

it. Wow. Last story. Yeah. I mean, the

18:23

idea is, I mean, the one text, the

18:25

way it works is very simple. It's kind

18:28

of like in Silicon Valley, they call rapid

18:30

prototyping nowadays, but essentially, the Americans took

18:32

the idea and they said, we're not asking

18:35

you to accept it. We don't want you to make

18:37

any decisions. All we want you

18:39

to do is criticize it. Well, no

18:41

one likes to make a hard decision,

18:43

but everybody loves to criticize. So the

18:46

Egyptians criticized it. The Israelis criticized it.

18:48

The Americans went back and redrafted the

18:50

proposal to try to address the concerns.

18:52

And then they brought it back and

18:55

did it again. And again, more

18:57

criticism. The Americans went through that process 23

19:00

times. There were 23 drafts over

19:03

the course of 13 days, even less because

19:05

there was fewer days. And

19:07

by the end of it, only

19:10

at the very end of that process did Carter

19:12

go to Sadat and beg in the two leaders

19:14

and say, this is the best we can do.

19:17

We can't improve it anymore. We can't make it

19:19

better for one without making it worse for the

19:21

other. This is the best we can do, if

19:23

you want it or not. And then Sadat and

19:25

Began were faced with a very different decision instead

19:27

of having to make multiple painful concessions. They

19:29

had to make only one decision and only at

19:31

the end of the process when they

19:34

could see exactly what they were going to get in return.

19:36

And so Sadat could see who was going to

19:38

get the entire Sinai back. Began could see he

19:40

was going to get an unprecedented piece with Egypt.

19:43

And they both said, yes. And that's

19:45

what led to the Camp David peace treaty to

19:47

a treaty that has lasted 40 years,

19:50

has lasted actually more than that at

19:52

this point to 45 years to this

19:54

point, has lasted to this day, even

19:56

in the midst of wars, assassination,

19:58

coup d'etat. and it

20:01

was the inventive idea of applying

20:04

our creativity, not just

20:06

to the hardware of software of computers, but

20:09

to the way in which we negotiate, that there

20:11

are better ways to negotiate, more effective. And

20:13

that was a really just powerful example for

20:15

me. I mean, it's the software of humans

20:17

in a way. The software of humans, that's

20:19

what we need. That's really what we need.

20:22

Yeah, and to sort of debug. So

20:25

you mentioned a few things I want to

20:27

underscore. The first was the powerful looking behind

20:29

positions with underlying interests. I suspect we'll come

20:31

back to this for sure. But identifying the

20:33

wants, desires, concerns, fears that are behind

20:36

a request or sort

20:38

of unrelenting position. And

20:42

you also mentioned something, and you didn't

20:44

say it in these words, but it

20:47

seemed to imply what I'm about

20:49

to mention. And that is writing the other

20:52

side of victory speech in quotation marks. Like

20:54

what are they going to use to

20:58

explain to others why

21:00

they agreed to X, whatever

21:03

that is. Would you mind expanding

21:05

on that? Doesn't need to be in the

21:07

Camp David context, could be in another context, but

21:10

it strikes me that in both cases, I mean,

21:12

these leaders need to go back and

21:15

explain to their cabinets, to their

21:17

populace why they did X. And

21:21

that type of consideration

21:24

of external judgment, I

21:27

would imagine accounts for a lot of

21:29

failures at the negotiating table. The victory

21:31

speech is one of my favorite exercises

21:33

because you're looking at an impossible situation.

21:36

It could be with your boss, could

21:38

be with your roommate, or it could

21:41

be an international conflict, but you're looking

21:43

at something seemingly impossible. It's

21:45

kind of like, you know, I like

21:47

to climb mountains. You know, you're at

21:50

the bottom of the mountain, you look at the top of

21:52

the mountain, then it seems impossible to get there. You can't

21:54

get from here to there in your mind, but

21:56

you might be able, if you

21:58

use your imagination. Put yourself on top

22:01

of the mountain, get from there to here, and then

22:03

you can figure out your way back. In

22:05

other words, you can work backwards. And that's what is

22:07

behind the victory speech, which is when

22:10

you're facing a difficult conflict,

22:13

start by writing out the

22:15

other side's victory speech. Imagine

22:17

you're asking your boss for something. You know, it might be

22:19

a situation. And you write out

22:22

what is it you imagine, just as a

22:24

thought experiment, imagine your boss says yes to

22:26

you. They accept what you want them to

22:29

do. They say, yeah. Now, imagine your boss

22:31

then has to go and justify that to

22:33

someone else whom he cares about, maybe his

22:35

board of directors, maybe his peers or her

22:37

peers. And write out

22:39

the victory speech. Just write out maybe

22:41

three talking points. Like, how could they

22:43

present to the people that they care about why

22:46

they said yes to your proposal? It's

22:49

got to be a victory for them. It can be a victory

22:51

for you, obviously, because they're doing what you want them to do.

22:53

But think about it and think about

22:56

the hardest questions that they're going to get, the

22:58

criticisms that they're going to receive. And

23:00

then think about what are the best answers they can give. Go

23:03

through that exercise and then see your

23:05

job as a negotiator as

23:07

helping them deliver that victory speech. And

23:10

I can tell you about how I've used it, but

23:12

that's the essence of it is to work backwards, think

23:15

about what victory would look like, and then work for us.

23:22

Last but not least, Soman Channani,

23:24

New York Times bestselling author of

23:26

The School for a Good and

23:28

Evil book series and Beasts

23:30

and Beauty, his collection of

23:33

reimagined fairy tales. So

23:38

I never did drugs growing up. I maybe did

23:40

pop once or twice and found it slowed me

23:42

down to the point of I never wanted to

23:44

do it again. And just to

23:48

wall that whole thing off as

23:50

stuff that other people do. And then during

23:53

COVID, I read The Body Keeps the Score. And

23:56

I had struggled with some things from...

24:00

my entire life in terms of anxiety

24:02

and just getting stuck in kind

24:04

of ruts of feeling. And

24:06

it was 2021, January, where I

24:08

just remember talking about follow the flow.

24:11

I stood up, went to my computer,

24:13

I remember being in Miami, in my

24:15

parents' house, Googling, ketamine

24:18

treatment, New York City. I knew

24:20

nothing about ketamine. Like, nothing.

24:23

How is it even in your field? I don't know. Just popped

24:25

into the head. I don't know. I just remember going to ketamine

24:27

there in New York City, calling up,

24:29

scheduling the consultation. And a week

24:32

later, I'm back in New York

24:34

going to meet the doctor. And I was like,

24:36

I don't know if I'm right for this. I don't

24:38

want anything that will mess with my creativity. I said,

24:40

the only reason I'm entertaining this idea is because

24:44

it's in a doctor's office. I said, I

24:46

would never do drugs on

24:48

my own because the fear surrounding

24:50

that of what could happen and

24:53

where it's procured from and all that stuff would

24:55

end up infecting the

24:57

whole experience. And with a doctor's office, I'm entertaining

24:59

it. I said, but I don't want it to

25:01

affect my creativity. I don't want it to... He's

25:03

like, it's only going to make you more

25:06

yourself and more creative. But he

25:08

goes, these are the three things that

25:10

I think make for

25:12

a good candidate. He's like, number one,

25:15

have you felt emotionally numb for most of your

25:17

life? And at that point in my life, absolutely.

25:20

I think I was in just cycles of

25:22

numbness. Number two was,

25:24

did you have a volatile childhood

25:27

where emotions were not particularly

25:30

welcome? And I was like, check,

25:34

check. And number three, he goes, this one's the most important.

25:38

He's like, do you know how to

25:40

have fun? And I said no.

25:42

And I cried. I remember crying in

25:44

the office. He's like, do you know how to have fun? And

25:47

it was the first time anyone had asked the

25:49

question in the right way. Because I knew the idea

25:51

of fun. I knew that I should

25:53

be having fun. I knew how to act like I was having

25:55

fun, but I never felt like I was having

25:58

fun. And he goes, you don't drink? I said no. and

26:00

he goes and I meditate. I was in that

26:02

point four or five years into meditation, he's like,

26:06

you're gonna have a very good response to this. He

26:08

just like instantly. And so I started

26:10

ketamine treatments. At that time, I think

26:13

you do six in 12 days, and then

26:15

you go back for a booster. In my case, it's

26:17

every 10 weeks and I still go and change

26:19

my life. I mean, it was like, I feel

26:21

like a totally different person because what it did is it woke

26:24

up parts of my brain that I didn't

26:26

know existed because they'd shut off so

26:29

early that I didn't know they were there. And

26:31

then all of a sudden, I started to get

26:34

glimpses of what I could be like.

26:36

And then it became a question of could I hold

26:38

on to that? And little by little, some people I

26:40

think get their benefits much quicker, or

26:42

they don't get any benefits at all. I mean,

26:44

it's so individual. In my case, it was almost

26:46

like a practice was like every 10 weeks I'd

26:48

go learn a million things, work

26:50

on those things in between, go back.

26:53

And it almost became like my

26:56

version of like the deepest therapy, you know,

26:58

it's become a huge reason for

27:00

everything. And I think it's

27:02

also allowed me to follow the flow more

27:05

than ever because the whole thing of

27:07

the ketamine treatment is it's a sedative,

27:10

right? So it puts your brain in such a relaxed state

27:12

that you have no choice but to follow the flow where

27:14

it goes. And the flow usually leads you closer to the

27:16

truth. So I

27:18

don't know. I think it's for someone who

27:20

was so anti-drugs. It was the biggest

27:22

thing I've changed my mind about. And

27:27

now here are the bios for all the guests. My

27:31

guest today is Cal Newport. Cal Newport is

27:33

a professor of computer science at Georgetown University,

27:35

where he is also a founding member of

27:38

the Center for Digital Ethics. In addition to

27:40

his academic work, Newport is a

27:42

New York Times bestselling author who writes for

27:44

a general audience about the intersection of technology,

27:47

productivity, and culture. His books have sold millions

27:49

of copies and have been translated into more

27:51

than 40 languages. He's also a

27:53

contributor to The New Yorker and hosts the popular

27:55

Deep Questions podcast. His new book is a series

27:58

of books that are available on the website. Slow

28:00

productivity, the lost art of

28:02

accomplishment without burnout. Cal

28:04

is not active on social media. This

28:07

is usually where I would say, you

28:09

can find him on these following social

28:11

media profiles, but you can't find him.

28:14

He is really not active outside of

28:16

his YouTube channel, which is the at

28:18

Cal Newport media channel, and the podcast,

28:21

and everything else you can find at

28:23

calnewport.com. In this conversation, we talk about

28:25

slow productivity, human-paced productivity,

28:28

the dangers of checklists,

28:30

and to-do lists, and

28:32

approaches that are similar. We

28:35

talk about so many things that Cal

28:37

puts into practice himself. He walked the

28:39

walk, and part of what I find

28:41

so impressive about him is how effectively

28:44

he has put positive constraints around

28:46

his work, and within his life,

28:49

so that he can do what he does best

28:51

with the fewest distractions possible.

28:58

My guest is Claire Hughes-Johnson. Claire

29:01

currently serves as a corporate officer and

29:03

advisor for Stripe, a global technology company

29:06

that builds economic infrastructure for the internet.

29:08

If you've bought just about anything online,

29:10

chances are at some point or another,

29:12

you have used Stripe, or if you've

29:14

sold something. Claire previously served as Stripe's

29:16

chief operating officer, COO, from 2014 to

29:18

2021, helping grow the company from

29:23

fewer than 200 employees to more than 6,000 employees. At

29:27

various times, she led business operations,

29:29

sales, marketing, customer support, risk, real

29:32

estate, and all of the people

29:34

functions, including recruiting in HR. And

29:36

if you think that sounds completely impossible and

29:38

crazy, you are right, it

29:40

does sound completely impossible, and she explains

29:43

how she managed to spin

29:45

so many plates at once at such a high

29:47

level. Prior to Stripe, Claire

29:49

spent 10 years at Google leading

29:51

a number of business teams, including

29:53

overseeing aspects of Gmail, Google Apps,

29:56

and ultimately consumer operations, as well

29:58

as serving as a vice president for ad. words,

30:00

online sales and operations, Google offers

30:02

and Google self-driving car project. So

30:05

she has a very diversified background

30:07

and is highly, highly adaptable. Her

30:09

book, which I recommend is Scaling

30:12

People, Tactics for Management and Company

30:14

Building. We get into a lot

30:16

of nitty gritty details. You're not

30:19

going to want to miss this

30:21

one. So you can find Claire

30:23

on Twitter at C Hughes Johnson,

30:26

C-H-U-G-H-E-S Johnson. Today

30:31

we have William Urie

30:33

as a guest. I am extremely excited

30:36

about this guest. I

30:38

have been familiar with William's

30:40

work for decades. And

30:43

when his name popped up as a

30:45

possible guest, I had to hop right

30:47

on it because I had many, many

30:49

questions for him. So who is William?

30:52

William Urie. You can find him on

30:54

Twitter at WilliamUrieGTY. You can also find

30:56

him on LinkedIn and other socials. His

30:59

co-founder of Harvard's program on negotiation is

31:01

one of the world's best known and

31:03

most influential experts on negotiation. He is

31:05

co-author of Getting to Yes, the all-time

31:08

best selling negotiation book in the world,

31:10

the author of one of my

31:12

favorite books on negotiation, Getting Past No,

31:14

Negotiating in Difficult Situations, which side note

31:17

I used to help build my first

31:19

company. And he is author

31:21

of the new book, Possible, How We

31:23

Survive and Thrive in an Age of

31:26

Conflict. He has served as a mediator

31:28

in boardroom battles, labor conflicts, and civil

31:30

wars around the world. And Avid Heiker,

31:33

he lives in Colorado. There

31:35

are some incredible stories in

31:37

this podcast episode. They will

31:39

blow your mind. There's a role

31:41

that Dennis Rodman has played in

31:44

helping William to understand the

31:46

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

31:49

There are stories about Hugo Chavez or

31:51

Hugo Chavez, the former president of Venezuela,

31:53

yelling in William's face and how that

31:56

came about and what came of it.

31:58

Lessons learned from Nelson Mandela. in

32:01

addition to Warren Buffett and

32:03

the film.

32:10

So much in on a for those who don't know who

32:13

are you I think of myself

32:15

as a specialist in the teenage mind and

32:18

I access that by being an author of young

32:20

adult fantasy using everything I

32:22

can about connecting to

32:24

young people and lovers a fantasy through

32:27

novels so that's what I've been doing for the last 10

32:29

years and for people who might

32:31

want to dig into that further any

32:33

works you might suggest they start with or

32:35

check out website anything like that. So

32:38

I've been doing a series called the school for the evil for 10

32:40

years there's six books in the series

32:42

and a Netflix made a movie out

32:44

of it that came out last year and then another book

32:47

a little bit for older audiences called be some beauty

32:49

which is going to be a TV show sometimes

32:52

soon so those are kind of my two

32:54

main things. Hey

32:57

guys this is Tim again just one more

32:59

thing before you take off and that is

33:01

five bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a

33:03

short email from me every Friday that provides

33:05

a little fun before the weekend between

33:08

one and a half and two million people

33:10

subscribe to my free newsletter my super short

33:13

newsletter called five bullet Friday easy

33:15

to sign up easy to cancel it

33:17

is basically a half page that I

33:19

send out every Friday to share the

33:21

coolest things I found in this government

33:23

or have started exploring over that week

33:25

kind of like my diary of cool

33:27

things it often includes articles and readings

33:29

books and reading albums perhaps

33:31

gadgets gizmos all sorts of tech

33:33

tricks and so on that gets

33:35

sent to me by my friends

33:37

including a lot of podcasts guests

33:39

and these strange esoteric things end

33:41

up in my field and then

33:43

I test them and then I share

33:45

them with you. So if that

33:47

sounds fun again it's very short a little

33:50

tiny bite of goodness before you head off

33:52

for the weekend something to think about. If

33:54

you'd like to try it out just go to

33:57

Tim.logs finish Friday to advantage your razor Tim blog

34:00

Flash Friday drop in your email and you

34:02

get the very next one