0:00

This episode is brought to you

0:02

by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional

0:04

supplement that supports whole body health.

0:07

I view AG1 as comprehensive nutritional

0:09

insurance and that is nothing new.

0:11

I actually recommended AG1 in my

0:13

2010 best

0:15

seller more than a decade ago, the 4-hour body,

0:18

and I did not get paid to do so.

0:20

I simply loved the product and felt

0:22

like it was the ultimate nutritionally dense

0:24

supplement that you could use conveniently while

0:27

on the run, which is for me

0:29

a lot of the time. I have

0:31

been using it a very, very long

0:33

time indeed. And I do get

0:35

asked a lot what I would take if

0:37

I could only take one supplement. And the

0:39

true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers

0:41

a ton of bases. I usually drink it

0:43

in the mornings and frequently take their travel

0:45

packs with me on the road. So

0:48

what is AG1? What is this

0:50

stuff? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of

0:52

vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced

0:54

nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives

0:57

you support for the brain, gut, and

0:59

immune system. Since 2010, they

1:02

have improved the formula 52 times in

1:04

pursuit of making the best

1:06

foundational nutrition supplement possible using

1:08

rigorous standards and high quality

1:11

ingredients. How many ingredients?

1:13

75. And you would be hard

1:15

pressed to find a more nutrient

1:17

dense formula on the market. It

1:20

has a multivitamin, multi-mineral superfood complex,

1:22

probiotics, prebiotics for gut health, an

1:24

antioxidant immune support formula, digestive enzymes,

1:27

and adaptogens to help manage stress.

1:29

Now, I do my best always

1:31

to eat nutrient dense meals. That is

1:34

the basic, basic, basic, basic requirement.

1:36

That is why things are called

1:38

supplements. Of course, that's what I

1:41

focus on. But it is not always possible. It

1:43

is not always easy. So part

1:45

of my routine is using AG1 daily.

1:47

If I'm on the road, on the

1:49

run, it just makes it easy to

1:51

get a lot of nutrients at once

1:53

and to sleep easy knowing that I

1:55

am checking a lot of important boxes.

1:57

So each morning, AG1. That's just... like

2:00

brushing my teeth, part of the routine.

2:02

It's also NSF certified for sports, so

2:05

professional athletes trust it to be safe.

2:07

And each pouch of AG1 contains exactly

2:09

what is on the label, does not

2:11

contain harmful levels of microbes or heavy

2:14

metals, and is free of 280 banned

2:16

substances. It's the ultimate nutritional supplement in

2:18

one easy scoop. So take ownership of

2:20

your health and try AG1 today. You

2:23

will get a free one-year supply of

2:26

vitamin D and five free AG1 travel

2:28

packs with your first subscription purchase. with your first

2:30

subscription purchase. So learn more, check it

2:32

out. Go to

2:35

drinkag1.com/Tim. That's

2:37

drinkag1, the number

2:40

one. drinkag1.com/Tim. Last

2:42

time, drinkag1.com. Check

2:45

it out. This

2:50

episode is brought to you by 8Sleep. I

2:52

have been using 8Sleep Pod Cover for

2:54

years now. Why? Well, by simply

2:56

adding it to your existing mattress on top, like

2:59

a fitted sheet, you can automatically cool down or

3:01

warm up each side of your bed. 8Sleep

3:04

recently launched their newest generation of the pod

3:06

and I'm excited to test it out, Pod4

3:09

Ultra. It cools, it heats, and now it

3:11

elevates automatically. More on that in a second.

3:13

First, Pod4 Ultra can cool down each side

3:16

of the bed as much as 20 degrees

3:18

Fahrenheit below room temperature, keeping you and your

3:21

partner cool, even in a heat wave. Or

3:23

you can switch it up depending on which

3:25

of you is heat sensitive. I

3:27

am always more heat sensitive, pulling the sheets

3:29

off, closing the windows, trying to crank the

3:31

AC down. This solves all of that. Pod4

3:34

Ultra also introduces an adjustable base that fits

3:36

between your mattress and your bed frame and

3:38

adds reading and sleeping positions for the best

3:40

unwinding experience. And for those snore heavy nights,

3:42

the pod can detect your snoring and automatically

3:45

lift your head by a few degrees to

3:47

improve air flow and stop you or your

3:49

partner from snoring. Plus with the Pod4 Ultra,

3:51

you can leave your wearables on the nightstand.

3:54

You won't need them because these types of

3:56

metrics are integrated into the Pod4 Ultra

3:58

itself. They have imperceptible. sensors which

4:00

track your sleep time, sleep bases, and

4:02

HRV. Their heart rate tracking is just

4:04

one example is at 99% accuracy.

4:08

So get your best night's

4:10

sleep. Head to 8sleep.com/Tim and

4:12

use code TIM to get

4:14

$350 off of the Pod4

4:16

Ultra. That's 8sleep, all spelled

4:19

out 8sleep.com/Tim, and code TIM,

4:21

T-I-M, to get $350 off

4:24

the Pod4 Ultra. They currently ship

4:26

to the United States, Canada, the

4:28

United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. Optimal,

4:31

minimal. At this altitude,

4:33

I can run flat out for a half mile

4:35

before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you

4:37

a personal question? Now, what is

4:39

it you're looking at? I'm

4:43

a cybernetic organism living this year over

4:45

metal and piscality. Hello,

4:55

boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is

4:58

Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the

5:00

Tim Ferriss show where it is my job

5:02

to sit down with world-class performers from every

5:04

field imaginable to tease out the habits, routines,

5:07

favorite books, and so on that you can

5:09

apply and test in your own lives. This

5:12

episode is a two-for-one, and that's

5:14

because the podcast recently hit its

5:16

10th year anniversary, which is insane

5:18

to think about, and passed 1

5:20

billion downloads. To celebrate, I've curated

5:22

some of the best of the

5:24

best, some of my favorites, from

5:26

more than 700 episodes over the

5:28

last decade. I could not be

5:31

more excited to give you these

5:33

super-combo episodes, and internally we've been

5:35

calling these the super-combo episodes, because

5:37

my goal is to encourage you

5:39

to, yes, enjoy the household names,

5:41

the super-famous folks, but to also

5:43

introduce you to lesser-known people I

5:45

consider stars. These

5:47

are people who have transformed my life, and

5:49

I feel like they can do the same

5:51

for many of you. Perhaps they got lost

5:54

in a busy news cycle, perhaps you missed

5:56

an episode. Just trust me on

5:58

this one, we went to great pains. is

16:01

if you're typing, putting

16:04

stuff down is work. If

16:08

you've got a computer, adding stuff

16:10

is not work. Choosing is

16:13

work. So it sort of

16:15

expands a bit like a guess. If you have two

16:18

things you could say, you say both of

16:21

them. If you have the

16:23

stuff you want to add, you add it. And I thought,

16:25

okay, I have to not do that

16:27

because otherwise my stuff is going to balloon and

16:30

it will become gaseous and

16:32

thin. So what I

16:34

love, if I've

16:36

written something on a computer and

16:38

I decide to lose a chunk, it feels

16:41

like I've lost work. If

16:43

I delete a page and a half, I feel like there's

16:45

a page and a half that

16:47

just went away. That's a page and

16:49

a half's worth of work I've just lost. If I've

16:52

been writing in a notebook and

16:54

I'm typing it up and I

16:57

can look at something and go, I don't need this page

16:59

and a half. And I

17:01

leave it out. I've just saved myself

17:03

work and it feels kind of like

17:06

I'm treating myself. So

17:09

I'm just trying to

17:11

always have in my head

17:13

the idea that maybe I'm

17:17

somehow on some cosmic level paying

17:19

somebody by the word in

17:21

order to be allowed to write. If they're

17:23

there, they should matter. They should mean

17:25

something. It's always important to me. This

17:28

might seem like a very, very mundane

17:31

question, but what type of notebooks do you

17:33

prefer? Are they large, like legal pens? Are

17:35

they leather bound? What

17:37

type of notebooks? When

17:39

they came out, I've used

17:41

a whole bunch of different ones. I bought big

17:44

drawing ones which actually turned out to be a

17:46

bit too big. I kind

17:48

of liked how much I could see

17:50

on the page. Those were the ones

17:52

I wrote Stardust and American Gods in,

17:54

sort of big size. But

17:56

they weren't terribly portable. I

17:58

went over to the moleskins,

18:02

and I loved them when they first came out,

18:04

and then they dropped their paper quality. And

18:08

dropping paper quality doesn't

18:10

matter unless you're writing in fountain

18:12

pen, because all of

18:14

a sudden, it's bleeding through, and

18:16

all of a sudden, you're writing on one page,

18:20

leaving a page blank because it's bled through and

18:22

writing on the next page. And

18:25

Joe Hill, about six or seven

18:27

years ago, Joe Hill,

18:29

the wonderful horror fantasy writer,

18:32

suggested the Leuchtturm to me.

18:35

So my usual notebook right

18:37

now is a Leuchtturm because I

18:40

really like the way you can paginate stuff

18:43

in them and the thickness of

18:45

the paper, and they're just

18:47

like sort of moleskins, but the Porsche

18:49

of moleskins, they're just better. And

18:52

I also have been writing, I wrote

18:54

the Graveyard Book, and I'm

18:56

writing the current novel in

18:59

these beautiful books that

19:01

I bought in

19:03

a stationary shop in

19:06

Venice, built into a bridge.

19:09

Somewhere in Venice, there's a little stationary

19:11

shop on a bridge, and

19:13

they have these beautiful, leather-bound

19:15

blank books that just look

19:17

like hardback books, but they're

19:20

blank pages. And I wrote

19:22

the Graveyard Book in one of those, I

19:24

bought four of them, and

19:28

now I'm using the next one on

19:30

the next novel, and it

19:32

may well go into another one,

19:35

I'm not sure, and then at home,

19:38

I say at home,

19:40

my house in Wisconsin, which is

19:43

where my stuff is. We

19:45

live in Woodstock, but I have

19:47

an entire life's worth of stuff still

19:51

sitting in my house in

19:53

Wisconsin, and it's become archives,

19:56

it's actually kind of fabulous having a house

19:58

that is an archive. would

38:00

be another example, was an investor. And

38:02

he, at some point, wrote in a

38:05

journal. Well, I think it was one of these composition

38:07

notebooks with the sort of modeled black and

38:09

white zebra slash camouflage covers. Oh, I love that. What

38:11

he would be when he was 40 years old, and

38:13

he must have done this when he was 10 or

38:15

12, something like that.

38:17

And he found it in his, I think his

38:19

parents' garage later

38:21

around the age of 42 or something like that.

38:23

And it also predicted, effectively,

38:26

exactly what he would be doing. But

38:29

it was lost in the slipstream,

38:32

and he took this very meandering,

38:35

in some ways,

38:37

odd, seemingly fractured path to come

38:39

right back to where he started in a

38:41

sense. Did you then,

38:43

it sounds

38:45

like you didn't follow that plan that was so

38:47

neatly summarized in this picture, because there are folks

38:49

out there saying, you know, when I was five,

38:51

I knew I always wanted to be X. But

38:55

what was your, when did you

38:57

figure out that you wanted to actually do what

39:00

was in that drawing on some level, that you wanted to be

39:02

a designer? I actually never

39:04

set out to be a designer.

39:07

I thought that I was going to

39:09

be a journalist. The

39:11

only thing that I knew for sure

39:14

when I was in college was

39:17

that when I graduated, I

39:19

wanted to live in Manhattan. At that point,

39:22

I had not ever lived in Manhattan. And

39:25

that was my big dream. And

39:29

I came to Manhattan this summer of

39:31

1983. I often

39:34

say that that was the summer of

39:36

David Bowie's Modern Love and the Police's

39:38

Synchronicity. I saw both concerts that summer.

39:41

I moved into a sublet

39:43

apartment with a friend that

39:46

had also recently graduated. She

39:48

had found a sublet on the corner

39:50

of Hudson and Perry Streets in the

39:52

village. I didn't know it at the

39:55

time, but moving into an apartment

39:57

on the intersection of Hudson and

39:59

Perry almost as if I

40:02

was entering the movie, Gidget Goes

40:04

to Manhattan. I

40:07

didn't know where I was going. It

40:10

was quite serendipitous. My friend Jay

40:13

found the apartment for us. Unfortunately,

40:16

that wonderful summer turned

40:18

out rather unfortunate because the woman who

40:20

Jay and I were subletting from was,

40:24

rather than paying the rent with the rent

40:26

money that she was getting from us, was

40:28

keeping it and not paying the rent. So

40:30

at the end of the summer, we all

40:32

got evicted. Surprise.

40:36

Yeah, I ended up appealing to the landlord

40:40

to please, please help me find someplace else to

40:42

live because I really didn't have any place else

40:44

to go. And he ended up

40:46

being able to rent me another one of

40:48

the apartments he had in another building he

40:50

owned on 16th Street, which

40:52

was a fourth floor tenement

40:55

walk-up, a railroad flat that

40:57

I couldn't afford on my own and

41:00

ended up living with a couple. My roommates

41:02

were a couple. Because it was a railroad

41:04

flat, I had to walk through the apartment,

41:06

which meant through their bedroom to get

41:09

to mine, which often meant I was

41:11

stuck on one side or the other

41:13

depending on their nocturnal habits or

41:17

afternoon delight depending on what they were

41:19

doing and lived there for

41:21

about five years before I ended up moving

41:23

back into the village for a short period

41:26

of time. So that

41:29

was the one thing I knew that I wanted to live in

41:31

Manhattan. I did not know that

41:33

I could be a designer, that I would

41:35

be a designer, or that design was even

41:37

a discipline until

41:40

my senior year of college.

41:42

I had worked my way up to

41:44

be the editor of

41:46

the arts and features section of the student

41:48

newspaper at SUNY Albany where I went to

41:51

school and realized very

41:53

quickly that as

41:55

much as I loved assigning articles and

41:57

coming up with themes for this section.

42:00

of the newspaper, I

42:02

was endlessly fascinated by putting

42:05

the paper together, by designing the paper,

42:08

and thus a baby designer was

42:10

born. I took all

42:12

of one class in design while

42:15

I was in college and really

42:17

learned almost everything I knew at

42:19

that time working in the newsroom,

42:22

putting the paper together, everything was

42:24

done, old school layout, paste-up, computer

42:26

graphic machines, stat cameras. And

42:29

then when I graduated, was both

42:31

doing freelance editorial and freelance

42:34

layout and paste-up for

42:36

the first couple of years of my career. When

42:39

did you start at the student

42:41

newspaper? Was that something you started at the very

42:43

beginning and followed throughout your,

42:45

I guess, undergrad experience?

42:48

I wanted to write for the student newspaper,

42:50

I think the very first issue

42:53

I saw when I got to SUNY Albany

42:56

freshman year and went

42:58

up to the student newspaper, which was on

43:00

the third floor of the campus center, and

43:03

approached the editor at

43:06

the time and asked if I

43:08

could be a writer or

43:10

offered my services, volunteered my

43:12

services. And he

43:14

looked at me and asked me if I

43:17

had any clips. And

43:20

I was like, I didn't say what

43:22

I was thinking, but like hair clips? I

43:24

didn't know what he was talking about. And

43:27

I didn't have anything and I didn't know what

43:29

to do and I was embarrassed and humiliated and

43:31

ashamed and sort of scurried away and didn't

43:34

go back until my

43:37

junior year. I was

43:39

so intimidated by the talent

43:41

and the work that was coming out

43:43

of that newsroom. And it

43:45

was at the time, and very well may still

43:47

be one of the best student newspapers in the

43:49

country. It came out twice a

43:52

week, Tuesdays and Fridays, and I was

43:54

just enamored with this newspaper

43:57

and I fantasized about writing.

44:00

really pithy, erudite letters

44:02

to the editor-in-chief that

44:05

would then get published in, you know, the letters

44:07

to the editor section, and they would realize what

44:09

a great writer I was and then invite me

44:11

to be a reporter. And

44:14

I'd sort of walk around like Rosalind Russell with

44:16

a pencil behind my ear and my heels

44:19

click-clacking in the newsroom. And, of course,

44:21

that never happened. I never

44:23

wrote one letter to the editor. And

44:26

for some reason, in, I guess, an aberrant moment

44:28

of courage, I went back up to the newsroom

44:31

my second semester

44:34

junior year, and there

44:36

was a women's uprising at the

44:40

student-read-of-the-student-health food store. And they were like, could

44:42

you go cover that? And I was like,

44:44

yeah, absolutely. And I went and

44:47

did it, and that was how I

44:49

started writing for the paper. I then

44:51

wrote a piece about an exhibit in the

44:53

art center. And by the end of my

44:55

second semester junior year, only because I

44:57

think no one else would take it, I

44:59

was offered the job of being editor

45:01

of the arts and features

45:04

section and began that summer.

45:06

That senior year in college

45:08

was one of the

45:10

most exciting and best years of

45:12

my life, in that for the

45:14

first time ever, I

45:17

felt like I

45:20

had purpose. Suddenly, working

45:22

on this paper, I felt like I was

45:24

part of something bigger than myself. I felt

45:26

like I had some reason

45:29

for being, and I loved

45:32

learning about design.

45:34

I loved being able to work with

45:36

writers, and I felt for

45:39

the first time in my life really excited about

45:41

something. I wanna talk about

45:43

that aberrant moment of courage and

45:45

dig into that a bit. So

45:47

you were rejected from, or maybe

45:49

rejected yourself or both initially

45:51

when you approached the paper. Then

45:54

years later, you have

45:56

this aberrant moment of courage. What

45:59

precipitated that? Was there a... conversation,

46:01

a realization, you watched a movie,

46:03

what triggered that? Do you remember?

46:06

I actually don't. I wish that I did. It

46:08

would make for a much better story and certainly

46:10

a better interview. What I can

46:12

tell you is that all

46:14

these years later, I have noticed a

46:16

pattern in my life of being

46:21

very easily hurt by

46:23

an initial reaction or

46:26

an initial rejection, so much

46:28

so that it thwarts any

46:31

other attempt at making something

46:33

like that happen for

46:36

a very long time. I am

46:39

extremely sensitive and any

46:42

rejection sort of takes

46:45

me off of that path

46:48

for quite a long time. It takes me

46:50

a while to recover. Could you give any examples of that?

46:53

I would say my entire life. I

46:55

can give you 43 examples. Get comfortable, Tim. I'm

46:59

definitely settling in with my water. I'm ready to

47:01

go. Well, there I was rejected

47:03

that first year of college took me then

47:05

three years to go back again. I might

47:08

have been feeling confident about something else that

47:11

had gone well in my life and thought,

47:13

what the heck? Why not go back and

47:15

try and then took those steps up to

47:17

the campus center and went back up to

47:19

the third floor and asked again? I

47:22

am somebody that has a very hard

47:25

time taking no for an answer, but

47:28

it takes me a long time to

47:30

recalibrate and get my courage back to

47:32

continue to keep trying. When

47:34

I graduated, because

47:40

I had such a hard time

47:42

finding a job initially

47:44

that I really

47:47

loved and because I was

47:49

having so much trouble figuring out what I

47:51

wanted to do with my life, I

47:54

kept bouncing around from opportunity

47:57

to opportunity. every

48:00

time I would try something new

48:02

and would ultimately get rejected, I

48:05

used that first rejection almost as a

48:07

permission slip to avoid

48:09

having to try again. So when I

48:12

graduated, I started working at

48:14

a couple of different magazines. I worked for a

48:16

cable magazine and I worked for a rock magazine

48:18

doing layout and paste up and some editing. And

48:21

at the time thought, I'm really enjoying this,

48:23

but I don't really feel qualified to be

48:25

doing this. Maybe I should go back to

48:27

school and get a master's degree in journalism.

48:30

And I lived in the neighborhood of a

48:32

very good journalism school, the

48:35

Columbia School of Journalism. And my

48:37

dad had gone to Columbia and studied pharmacy

48:39

and I thought, why not apply to the

48:41

Columbia School of Journalism? But

48:43

that was the only school I applied to. I thought,

48:46

I want to consider getting a master's degree in journalism.

48:48

There are a lot of good journalism schools in New

48:50

York City, but for some reason I had my heart

48:52

set on this one school. I

48:54

didn't get in, I got rejected

48:56

and abandoned my hopes or dream

48:58

of going to get a

49:00

master's degree in journalism shortly thereafter. Because

49:03

I also am a painter, I had

49:06

been accepted into a show at Long

49:09

Island University, the Brooklyn campus, and got

49:11

some good reviews and thought, hm, maybe

49:13

I should become an artist. I love

49:15

doing this, I'm getting some good response

49:17

from it, but I don't feel qualified

49:19

or educated enough. Maybe I

49:21

should get an advanced degree in art. And

49:24

I applied to the Whitney School, the Whitney

49:26

Museum of Art had an independent study program

49:28

that would allow me to continue working during

49:30

the day. I applied for

49:33

that, I had really good references, wonderful clips

49:35

at that point, some good reviews, and

49:38

got rejected to that and then abandoned that

49:40

dream. And so it's

49:43

been a long history of making

49:46

an attempt, getting that

49:49

early rejection, retreating, and then

49:51

finally sort of licking

49:54

my wounds, re- sort of knitting

49:57

my confidence or hopes and dreams

49:59

together. and then trying to do

50:01

something else or trying again.

50:05

So a few questions. The first is

50:07

what would you have, or

50:10

what would you say to your college

50:13

self after that

50:15

first rejection at the

50:17

newspaper? Or what advice would you

50:19

give someone who had the near identical

50:21

experience and was hardwired the same

50:24

way? Well, it's

50:26

an interesting question, Tim, because I

50:28

have the benefit of hindsight. And

50:31

looking back on those years, yes,

50:35

I certainly could have tried

50:38

again sooner and

50:40

maybe had more

50:43

of a runway to experiment

50:45

and grow and learn in

50:48

that newsroom and in that environment. But

50:52

I also think

50:54

that those years in between, learning

50:58

and growing in other ways contributed

51:01

to my ability to

51:03

then, when appointed

51:06

the editor of

51:08

the Arts and Features section, I

51:11

somehow had a lot more to

51:13

pull from. And maybe this is

51:15

my own sort

51:17

of synthesizing happiness or calibrating to

51:19

my own set point or

51:22

looking back and thinking, well,

51:24

it all sort of worked

51:27

out. So why give

51:29

somebody advice that I wouldn't have necessarily

51:31

taken at that point? What

51:34

I would say is don't

51:36

accept the first rejection ever.

51:40

Give yourself options. The

51:43

timeliness of those options or the

51:45

timeliness of those retries,

51:48

do at your own pace. You're

51:51

not in competition with anybody but yourself. So

51:56

if you are rejected to something

51:58

that you want, and

52:00

think about what it is that

52:03

caused that rejection and

52:05

work to better understand how you

52:07

can present

52:10

your best possible self when you

52:12

try again. Your clips mention where

52:14

you're like clips, hair clips reminded me of a story

52:16

I heard when I was a student. So you work

52:19

with a lot of students and we're gonna come back

52:21

to that. Oh

52:23

Tim, can I add one more thing? Of course.

52:25

I'm sorry. This is an interesting. You

52:27

can add many things, please. So

52:30

one thing that I haven't shared about

52:32

this particular story is that the young

52:34

man that rejected me that first year

52:37

is somebody that I then

52:39

befriended in that experience

52:42

of working at the paper that

52:44

junior year. And I graduated in 1983.

52:47

It is now 2017. And

52:52

I have been friends with that man. His

52:54

name is Robert Edelstein. I

52:57

have been friends with him ever since. So

53:00

just because somebody rejects you doesn't

53:02

mean that they don't like

53:04

you. First of all, he didn't even reject

53:06

me. He asked me for a very reasonable,

53:10

he asked me for something very reasonable. He

53:12

asked me for some examples of my writing.

53:15

I was so intimidated and was so embarrassed

53:17

by not knowing exactly what

53:19

he meant and the fact that I didn't

53:21

have anything other than some things from high

53:23

school, which I didn't feel were appropriate, that

53:25

I was the one that rejected myself in

53:27

many ways. One of the interesting things that

53:29

I have found is, and

53:32

Rob is not the only person that I can point to

53:35

as being somebody that initially provided

53:38

some sort of obstacle or roadblock

53:40

that was a reasonable one. And

53:43

then ultimately I befriended and

53:46

we've become, we are now lifelong

53:48

friends. He didn't even

53:51

remember rejecting me that freshman

53:53

year and is mortified

53:55

now by the notion that he

53:57

might've done anything to hurt my

53:59

feelings. can

56:00

be explained by incompetence or just busyness. The

56:02

person is busy. If they send you a

56:04

really short response to your mini novella of

56:06

an email, it doesn't mean that they think

56:08

you're worthless or not worth their time. It

56:10

could just mean that they have 10 times more to do than

56:12

you do. And it's sometimes hard to

56:15

have that perspective when particularly you're starting out

56:17

and you're a bit fragile and you're on

56:19

wobbly legs and you send

56:21

this huge outpouring of your emotion to someone

56:23

you respect and then they respond with, sorry

56:25

kid, not right now. And you're like, really?

56:27

That's it? And I'm not

56:29

gonna name names, but there's someone who now I'm

56:31

very close friends with, extremely well

56:34

respected writer. And I got one of

56:36

these one line responses in 2005 or 2006 when

56:40

I sent an early manuscript of the

56:42

four hour workweek to this person via

56:45

email. And the response was, effectively,

56:48

thanks, but sorry, don't have time

56:50

to read this right now. No,

56:52

dear Tim, no signature, just one

56:54

line. And I felt

56:56

so slighted by this that I held this

56:58

subconscious grudge for years. And now we're really

57:00

good friends and the whole thing is ludicrous

57:02

in retrospect. One thing that I find about

57:04

human nature is that ambiguity

57:07

is always perceived negatively.

57:10

So there might be nothing

57:12

in that one line email

57:14

that would be in any

57:16

way disparaging or insulting

57:18

or anything, but because we

57:20

as humans perceive ambiguity negatively,

57:22

we tend to read into

57:25

things that aren't there in

57:27

a way that makes us feel bad. But I also

57:29

think that a lot of that for me comes

57:33

from having a

57:35

very fragile center

57:37

and not necessarily

57:39

thinking that they are specifically

57:45

upset with me because

57:48

of something that I've done, but just because everything

57:50

that I do is sort of bad. They're

57:53

just cognizant of that. So it's

57:55

not something specific, it's just something

57:57

all-encompassing. And so that's been something

57:59

I've been. struggling to overcome over

58:02

the decades. So I have a

58:04

few questions about how

58:07

you came to find

58:10

your niche for the first time you clicked

58:14

into place, so to speak, doing

58:16

something that resembles what you ended

58:18

up doing up to

58:20

this point. But before I get to that, just to put a button

58:23

in the anecdote related to clips, you

58:25

mentioned clips, you got clips, hair clips.

58:27

I was told this story by a

58:29

professor in college about Nantucket nectars when

58:31

it was just getting started. And there

58:33

were, I believe, two guys who were

58:36

really faking it until they made it in a

58:38

lot of respects. And at

58:40

one point, they were meeting with this distributor because

58:43

they'd been selling these concoctions via boats

58:45

in Nantucket from boat to boat to

58:47

boat. And they wanted to go

58:49

into retail. And it met with

58:51

this, it was either a retailer or distributor,

58:54

but it was early on. And they were

58:56

really nervous. And the muckety muck they were

58:58

meeting with, at least in their eyes, said,

59:01

do you have a lot of POS materials?

59:04

And they looked at

59:06

each other like, oh, shit. And they said, oh,

59:09

POS, we're all about POS. And

59:11

he's like, good, good, good. And then they walked out, they're

59:13

like, what the hell is POS? Point

59:15

of sale, which of course,

59:17

you know, plenty about. But I wanted

59:20

to, before we get to when

59:22

you first

59:25

clicked into your niche and how that

59:27

happened, you mentioned knowing

59:30

that you wanted to be in

59:32

Manhattan. And I've been thinking a lot

59:34

about the components of, and this is

59:36

a dangerous word sometimes, but happiness. And

59:39

that oftentimes we think of

59:42

the journalist Ws, right? The interactives,

59:44

the why, the what, the where, and so on of

59:46

happiness. And I think humans

59:48

tend to at least put why at

59:50

the top, then maybe what somewhere lower,

59:52

and then where is often

59:54

an afterthought. But I've started to believe that

59:57

the where is much more critical than we

59:59

give it credit. credit for and that you

1:00:01

can actually start there. So I thought about

1:00:03

this a lot for myself, but really the

1:00:05

how important the geography can be because it

1:00:07

determines in large measure who you're surrounded with

1:00:09

all the time and what you're surrounded with

1:00:11

all the time. But I

1:00:13

guess it's more of an observation than a question. But

1:00:16

if you think about that, how do you think

1:00:18

about through the components of happiness

1:00:20

or well-being for yourself? Well,

1:00:23

there's sort of two parts to the question, I think.

1:00:25

And the first is this notion

1:00:28

of New York sort of

1:00:30

being the place that I wanted

1:00:32

to be and what I told

1:00:34

myself at that time. And

1:00:39

then ultimately how that leads

1:00:41

to happiness or fulfillment. And

1:00:45

one of the things that I

1:00:48

struggled with when I first moved

1:00:51

to Manhattan or when I first graduated

1:00:53

really was what was I

1:00:55

going to be? What was I going to

1:00:57

do? I didn't have a lot

1:00:59

of money. I didn't have any

1:01:01

network. And I certainly

1:01:04

didn't have any type of connection

1:01:06

to any ins for apartments or

1:01:08

jobs or anything like that. And

1:01:12

I wanted

1:01:14

very badly to be in Manhattan.

1:01:17

That was something that I knew for sure. In

1:01:19

thinking about what I wanted with my

1:01:21

life, I knew that

1:01:23

I wanted to do something creative. One

1:01:26

of my big hopes and dreams at that

1:01:28

time was to work at Condé Nast and

1:01:31

I did apply and I did get a

1:01:33

call back and I got rejected and then

1:01:35

never tried again another example of that. But

1:01:39

one of the more

1:01:41

high altitude aspirations was either

1:01:44

being an artist or being

1:01:46

a writer. So being more

1:01:48

of a fine artist and not a commercial artist.

1:01:51

But at the time I did

1:01:53

not think that

1:01:56

my chances of success at

1:01:58

that would either

1:02:01

be possible, and certainly, if

1:02:03

it were possible, not fast.

1:02:06

And because I wanted to live in New York

1:02:08

City, because I wanted to live in Manhattan, I

1:02:12

felt that I needed to be able

1:02:14

to get a job that would pay

1:02:17

my rent. Because I didn't

1:02:19

want to be a waitress, and because

1:02:21

I didn't want to be a bartender,

1:02:24

I needed to make

1:02:26

some type of reasonable income

1:02:28

in order to pay that

1:02:30

rent. And

1:02:33

so I have been

1:02:35

telling myself for decades

1:02:37

now that I

1:02:40

decided that I needed to

1:02:42

work as a designer because

1:02:45

I needed to have

1:02:47

some sort of income that

1:02:49

would give me some sense of

1:02:51

self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency has been enormously important

1:02:53

to me, and I've said that

1:02:55

for years and years and years,

1:02:57

and that being safe and

1:03:00

secure and being able to manage

1:03:02

the course of my own life, having

1:03:05

financial stability, was something that was a

1:03:08

bit of a lead gene for me in making the

1:03:10

decisions that I did. And

1:03:12

back in that summer of David Bowie

1:03:14

and the police, I remember coming

1:03:16

home from a club one night, and I

1:03:18

was on the corner of Bleecker Street in

1:03:21

6th Avenue, and it suddenly occurred to me

1:03:23

that I had to make a decision. And

1:03:25

the decision was, what was I going to

1:03:27

do? And

1:03:32

I realized that if I wanted to

1:03:34

be an artist or a

1:03:36

writer, that I would likely have to

1:03:38

take some type of job that

1:03:41

would not necessarily be

1:03:43

able to safeguard what I considered

1:03:45

to be my financial future, and

1:03:48

therefore made this little

1:03:50

pact with myself in my head

1:03:52

that I would become a designer

1:03:55

so that I could make enough money

1:03:57

to be able to... be

1:04:00

secure. And I've been telling

1:04:02

myself that for decades. What

1:04:05

I realized in the last couple

1:04:07

of years was that

1:04:09

I was unbeknownst to my psyche,

1:04:11

my consciousness, I was lying to

1:04:14

myself. I was absolutely positively lying

1:04:16

to myself because more

1:04:19

than the self-sufficiency was

1:04:22

the desire to be in Manhattan.

1:04:26

I could have easily become, or

1:04:28

more easily become, an

1:04:30

artist or a fine artist or

1:04:33

a writer if I didn't want

1:04:35

to live in the most expensive city in

1:04:37

the world. I could have gone and lived

1:04:39

with my mother in Queens. I

1:04:41

could have lived with friends in

1:04:44

Albany. I could have had seven

1:04:46

roommates in a little commune in

1:04:48

Bed-Stuy. There would have

1:04:50

been any number of things that

1:04:52

I could have done if my

1:04:55

lead gene had been artistic purity.

1:04:59

But no, I told myself that it was

1:05:01

because of X, Y, and Z. But really,

1:05:04

what it was, was the most important

1:05:06

thing to me at that point in

1:05:08

my life was being in Manhattan. And

1:05:10

I lived in a fourth floor tenement

1:05:12

walk-up. I had to walk through somebody

1:05:14

else's bedroom to get to mine. I

1:05:17

was living on a floor with people

1:05:19

that were constantly, the other tenants in

1:05:21

the building were locking each other out.

1:05:23

It was an elderly couple and they

1:05:25

were always fighting. There were a whole

1:05:28

family of pigeons living on the fire

1:05:30

escape outside of my window in my

1:05:32

bedroom, which was so decrepit. I couldn't

1:05:34

even open the window in the summertime

1:05:36

and there was no air conditioning in

1:05:39

this apartment. I mean,

1:05:41

the conditions that I lived

1:05:43

in were deplorable, but yet

1:05:46

that was the most important thing to me.

1:05:49

So when I talk to people now about

1:05:51

what do they want to do when they

1:05:53

first graduate, I ask them to

1:05:55

think about what is the one most

1:05:58

important thing to you. organization

1:12:00

to help eradicate domestic

1:12:03

violence, sexual assault, and child

1:12:05

abuse. And I've been

1:12:07

working with Mariska and Miley Zambuto,

1:12:09

the CEO of the foundation now

1:12:11

for the last five years. And

1:12:14

this work, I believe, the branding work that I've

1:12:16

been able to do with them taking into

1:12:20

all the expertise I've had

1:12:22

in repositioning and branding some

1:12:24

of the biggest CPG

1:12:27

companies in the world. And now

1:12:29

dovetailing that with my own background

1:12:33

really truly makes me feel like

1:12:35

my whole life makes sense to

1:12:37

him. That's beautiful.

1:12:40

And I'm really glad

1:12:42

you're talking about this because I can

1:12:45

imagine a very different experience,

1:12:47

but I've had my own

1:12:50

battles with darkness of different types. And

1:12:52

it's very easy to believe that you

1:12:54

are alone or isolated or that

1:12:56

things will never change. And

1:12:59

I'm sure there are people listening who have had

1:13:02

similar experiences to yours who have

1:13:05

never talked about them or have never

1:13:07

found a way to perhaps integrate or

1:13:09

reconcile them. And this might be

1:13:11

an incredible catalyst for them. I

1:13:13

would love to ask if you're open to talking

1:13:16

about it for yourself, have you found any particular

1:13:19

avenues or types of work to

1:13:21

be particularly helpful to

1:13:23

you? Of course, the work

1:13:25

that you're doing with the Joyful Heart Foundation,

1:13:27

but apart from that, are there

1:13:29

any particular types of exercises or

1:13:31

work or anything really that has helped

1:13:34

you to be

1:13:36

more at peace with

1:13:38

your experience? I think

1:13:41

that the work that I've done in

1:13:44

therapy has saved my life. I

1:13:48

have always been really

1:13:52

dedicated to my therapy

1:13:55

and have been

1:13:57

in therapy with the same

1:14:00

analyst now for over two

1:14:02

decades. What type of therapy

1:14:04

is that, if you don't mind me asking? I know

1:14:06

very little about it. The person who I work with

1:14:09

is a PhD. She was

1:14:11

very involved in the psychoanalytic

1:14:14

community in New York City.

1:14:16

She's now living in Santa

1:14:19

Fe. I think that it's

1:14:22

a combination of a number of different

1:14:24

philosophies and theories, probably

1:14:26

at its foundation, psychoanalysis,

1:14:29

but certainly with quite a

1:14:31

lot of variations. It's

1:14:33

talk therapy. I started

1:14:36

back in the early 90s, five

1:14:38

days a week, and then moved

1:14:40

down to three days. Now I'm usually

1:14:43

two to three days. It is

1:14:46

enormously helpful to help me try

1:14:48

to make sense of

1:14:50

these experiences that I've had for anybody

1:14:53

that is either

1:14:55

in the midst of experiencing them

1:14:58

or experiencing the aftermath.

1:15:01

There are a lot of resources. One

1:15:03

of the things that I experienced when

1:15:05

I was in the midst of these

1:15:07

experiences was a sense

1:15:10

of profound aloneness. The

1:15:13

worst experiences I had were in the

1:15:15

70s. At the time, the topic wasn't one

1:15:17

that was as understood. I didn't know

1:15:26

what was happening to me. I

1:15:29

thought I was the only person

1:15:31

in the world that this was

1:15:33

happening to because it seemed so

1:15:36

surreal and unnatural

1:15:39

and punishing.

1:15:42

It didn't occur to me that this

1:15:44

was pervasive, that this was a

1:15:47

cultural epidemic. I was told

1:15:49

at the time by

1:15:52

the perpetrator that

1:15:54

if I told anybody

1:15:56

that he had the

1:15:58

resources, to hurt my

1:16:01

brother and my mother, that he would kill them.

1:16:03

It's horrible. And I believed that.

1:16:06

I was a little girl. I believed

1:16:08

that. And I

1:16:11

was protecting them. And

1:16:15

I didn't know that I

1:16:17

had any other resources. None.

1:16:20

And didn't even tell my mother until after

1:16:22

they got divorced. Because, Tim, I didn't want

1:16:24

to be the reason. I didn't want to

1:16:27

be blamed. And I also didn't

1:16:29

think anybody would believe me. And I didn't

1:16:31

want my mother and my brother to be

1:16:33

harmed. It wasn't until

1:16:35

I was much older that I

1:16:37

realized that this

1:16:40

was pervasive. So for

1:16:42

anybody that is listening, if

1:16:45

you feel alone, know that

1:16:47

you're not. You can

1:16:49

go to the Joyful Heart

1:16:51

Foundation, thejoyfulheartfoundation.org. And

1:16:54

there are resources and phone numbers. You

1:16:56

can also go to nomore.org, which is

1:16:58

another organization that I've helped. And

1:17:01

there are resources and people that are

1:17:03

there to help and listen and get

1:17:06

you out of the situation that you are

1:17:08

in. Thank you for that. To

1:17:10

insert some levity, I'm not sure how to segue

1:17:12

from here. Well,

1:17:14

let's talk about some of the really, really

1:17:17

important things that people are

1:17:19

doing now to not

1:17:21

only eradicate this type of violence,

1:17:23

but also to change the world.

1:17:25

One of the other things that

1:17:27

Joyful Heart is doing that I

1:17:29

am so proud of is ending

1:17:32

the backlog. There are hundreds of

1:17:34

thousands of rape kits that are

1:17:36

not being investigated,

1:17:39

that are sitting in shelves in

1:17:41

police departments all over the country.

1:17:44

And so the Joyful Heart Foundation,

1:17:46

along with Vice President Joe Biden,

1:17:48

has been very involved in getting

1:17:50

funding to help analyze

1:17:52

those rape kits to be able

1:17:54

to analyze the DNA and get

1:17:57

serial rapists off the streets and

1:17:59

get them out of the country.

1:18:01

get justice for the victims of

1:18:03

those crimes. So that's a really,

1:18:05

really important thing that they're doing

1:18:07

and something that I feel can

1:18:10

ultimately change not only the sort

1:18:12

of rape culture that we're living

1:18:14

in, but also the blaming of

1:18:16

victims. So we can change culture

1:18:18

by doing this work together. It's

1:18:21

something I'm super proud of. And

1:18:23

to those people listening, all of

1:18:25

these resources that are

1:18:27

being mentioned throughout this episode will

1:18:29

be in the show notes. So

1:18:31

you can certainly find the links

1:18:34

to knowmore.org, the Joyful Heart Foundation,

1:18:36

and so on at fourhourworkweek.com,/podcast, all

1:18:38

spelled out. Debbie,

1:18:40

I'd love to ask you to shift gears just a

1:18:42

little bit or perhaps

1:18:44

a lot, the Speak Up story. That's

1:18:49

one of my favorite stories. All right, I

1:18:52

will let you run with it. I would love for you

1:18:54

to share. Okay,

1:18:57

so I want to start this

1:18:59

story by letting people know that

1:19:01

this was something that while

1:19:03

it was happening, I

1:19:05

thought was the worst professional

1:19:08

experience of my life. And

1:19:11

it's turned out to be the

1:19:13

most important and life-affirming of my life.

1:19:15

So let me tell you a little

1:19:17

bit about the Speak Up story. So

1:19:20

the year is 2003. And

1:19:24

the time in

1:19:26

the world was quite different than it is now. So

1:19:28

we were online, but we weren't quite online in the

1:19:31

way that we are now. I think

1:19:33

YouTube was just, just, just beginning.

1:19:36

It was a video sharing site more

1:19:38

than anything. We were online,

1:19:40

but we were playing games and we

1:19:42

were ordering from the J. Crew catalog.

1:19:44

I don't know if people remember when

1:19:46

the J. Crew catalog went online, people's

1:19:48

heads exploded. You could buy things online and

1:19:51

they could be shipped to you and

1:19:53

you don't have to leave the house.

1:19:55

Oh my God, that's so amazing. And

1:19:57

we were playing games and we were emailing.

1:20:00

and reading the news. And there were

1:20:02

forums where people would congregate, but they

1:20:04

tended to be more niche

1:20:06

forums and not so much

1:20:09

mainstream cultural forums. Prior

1:20:11

to that, leading up to that

1:20:13

time in my life, I had

1:20:15

joined Sterling Brands in 1995.

1:20:20

And this was one of the first moments

1:20:22

of that click that you had mentioned earlier

1:20:24

where suddenly, without even realizing

1:20:27

it, I had joined

1:20:29

a firm where I was hired

1:20:32

to help grow the business via

1:20:34

the acquisition of new clients in

1:20:36

branding. And the job

1:20:38

was one of the first times

1:20:41

in my life where

1:20:44

I was

1:20:46

almost effortlessly successful. I

1:20:49

think because of my early

1:20:52

childhood in my father's

1:20:54

pharmacy, being surrounded by brands,

1:20:56

I had, and my own sort of obsession

1:20:58

with things like Lay's Potato Chips. I was

1:21:00

too to say Lay's Potato Chips. Exactly.

1:21:04

I had this almost magical

1:21:08

ability to understand why

1:21:12

and how people chose

1:21:14

the objects that they did to

1:21:16

be part of their lives, mostly

1:21:19

the brands that they chose. So

1:21:21

I started working at Sterling Brands and had

1:21:24

this heretofore, unbelievable

1:21:26

level of success, financially,

1:21:29

and I really enjoyed it.

1:21:32

I am also endlessly fascinated by

1:21:35

the choices people make for

1:21:37

the objects in their lives, what

1:21:40

they choose to surround themselves with, the kinds of

1:21:42

things they buy and share

1:21:45

and eat and wear and so forth. And

1:21:48

in as much as I loved

1:21:50

what I was doing and in as much

1:21:52

as I was relishing the level of success

1:21:54

that in my early 30s, I

1:21:56

was finally, finally getting, I

1:21:59

also was... still sort

1:22:01

of longing for that artistic,

1:22:03

creative sort of part of

1:22:05

my life that I felt

1:22:07

was deeply missing. At

1:22:10

that point, what department were you working in?

1:22:12

I was working in marketing and sales. Got

1:22:14

it. And I wasn't at that time doing

1:22:17

very much design work. I was doing some

1:22:19

work freelance. I had

1:22:21

been appointed the off-air

1:22:24

creative director at Hot 97, which

1:22:26

is a whole other sort of

1:22:28

story to share at some point.

1:22:31

But I was working to develop the

1:22:33

identity and the graphics for the first ever hip-hop

1:22:35

radio station, which happened to be in New York

1:22:38

and was called Hot 97. That

1:22:40

was the only thing that I was doing on

1:22:42

the side. I started working at Sterling Brands and

1:22:45

was longing for a design community

1:22:47

and was longing for a

1:22:50

feeling of being part of something bigger than I

1:22:52

was on my own, but something that was much

1:22:55

more creative and had

1:22:58

no commercial implications. And

1:23:00

I found the AIGA, the American Institute

1:23:02

of Graphic Arts, and they

1:23:05

had a special interest group

1:23:07

within AIGA called the Brand

1:23:09

Experience Center. And I

1:23:11

was so excited. I thought, oh my

1:23:13

God, this is the Venn diagram of

1:23:16

my life. I can do branding, and

1:23:18

they have designers, and all these famous

1:23:20

designers are on the board, and I

1:23:22

could meet them, and I could be

1:23:24

part of this great community. And

1:23:27

so I went and I volunteered, and I became a member

1:23:30

of AIGA, and I was working with

1:23:32

this Brand Experience group, and

1:23:34

I loved it, and I was appointed to

1:23:36

the board, and I felt really, really part

1:23:38

of something. And

1:23:40

the board term was, I think, two

1:23:42

years. And at the end of the

1:23:44

term, if we wanted to be on the

1:23:47

board again, we all had to reapply. And

1:23:49

in that two years, I was very active.

1:23:51

I went to all the meetings, and we

1:23:54

weren't funded by AIGA. We had a self-fund,

1:23:56

and so I made cupcakes for bake sales.

1:23:58

and we had a flea market, and I

1:24:00

was very, very involved in the sort of

1:24:02

day-to-day runnings of this little special interest group.

1:24:05

At the end of the two years, we

1:24:07

all had to reapply if we wanted to

1:24:09

be on the board again, and every single

1:24:11

person reapplied. And every single person

1:24:13

was appointed on the board again, except me.

1:24:16

I was rejected. Oh. Oh,

1:24:20

you set me up with the cupcakes. Oh

1:24:22

my God, I know. Oh my God, oh.

1:24:24

No, they were really good cupcakes, and brownies.

1:24:27

And I was devastated.

1:24:29

I was just devastated. And

1:24:32

Rick Rafeh, who was then the executive

1:24:34

director, he had been aware of

1:24:36

how much I wanted to be in AIGA, and

1:24:39

how much I wanted to do, and my aspirations. And I

1:24:41

think he felt really bad for me. He asked me if

1:24:44

I wanted to have lunch, and he took me to a

1:24:46

very expensive lunch at 11 Madison.

1:24:48

And over the course of his lunch, yeah,

1:24:50

it was super wonderful and generous of him.

1:24:52

Over the course of lunch, he said, please,

1:24:54

please don't give up on AIGA. We need

1:24:56

people like you, and don't give up. We'll

1:24:58

find a place for you. And

1:25:01

I guess as a bit of

1:25:03

a consolation prize, he asked me

1:25:05

if I would be a judge

1:25:08

in the upcoming annual competition that

1:25:10

AIGA had, called 365. And

1:25:13

he asked me if I wanted

1:25:15

to be a judge in the package

1:25:17

design category. This to me

1:25:19

was almost worth being kicked to the curb

1:25:22

by this special interest group of the Brand

1:25:24

Experience Center. This was like the biggest honor

1:25:26

of my career at that point, to be

1:25:28

a judge in the

1:25:31

country's biggest design competition was

1:25:34

unfathomable to me. It felt like a

1:25:36

miracle. And so I

1:25:38

went to the judging, and there were

1:25:40

two other judges with me. We had

1:25:42

700 entries that we needed to look

1:25:44

at in one day. And

1:25:46

when I got to the judging at AIGA

1:25:49

headquarters, I met with

1:25:51

the other two jurors. One

1:25:53

was a very well-known designer who

1:25:55

had a bit of a boutique

1:25:58

agency, very posh. She was very

1:26:00

stylish. I did not feel nearly

1:26:02

as stylish. Another guy was

1:26:04

there from Apple, and this was shortly

1:26:06

after the iPod had been released, and

1:26:09

he was on his iPod the whole

1:26:11

time, and really didn't spend a lot

1:26:13

of time paying attention to the judging.

1:26:15

In any case, this other juror, the

1:26:17

other juror. What a dick. Yeah. Anyway.

1:26:20

The other juror looks at me. Sorry, guy, I don't know.

1:26:22

Yeah. The other juror looks at me when

1:26:24

I get there, and she's like, just so you know, I

1:26:27

don't intend to have any mass market packaging

1:26:30

in this competition get an

1:26:32

award. Wow. And

1:26:34

I was like, okay. And

1:26:36

I didn't agree with that. I mean,

1:26:39

I understandably had come, I was working

1:26:41

at a CPG package design firm, and

1:26:43

we had recently designed the Burger King

1:26:45

logo, and the Star Wars Episode II

1:26:47

attack of the clones packaging, and merchandising,

1:26:49

and the Hershey bar, and so,

1:26:51

you know, I was coming from a completely different point

1:26:54

of view. We ended up disagreeing

1:26:57

so vehemently that at one point I thought we

1:26:59

were gonna actually come to Fisticuffs, but we were

1:27:02

only- Was this behind the scenes, or is this

1:27:04

while you're on the panel? No, this is while

1:27:06

we're on the panel, and there's somebody

1:27:08

that's trailing us writing notes for an

1:27:10

article that's going to appear in the

1:27:12

annual. It

1:27:14

was mortifying. In any case,

1:27:16

we were only able to agree, I

1:27:18

think, on seven things that would go

1:27:21

into the competition journal, which

1:27:23

is not a way to encourage future

1:27:27

applicants to apply for

1:27:29

the competition. So

1:27:31

AIGA was not particularly happy with us.

1:27:34

This juror of mine, the fellow juror,

1:27:36

hated me, and I felt

1:27:38

at the end of that day that

1:27:40

I would never ever be asked to

1:27:42

do anything with AIGA ever again. And

1:27:45

I remember walking back to my office, which was at the

1:27:47

Empire State Building at the time, it was sort of dusk,

1:27:49

and I felt like, oh, this

1:27:51

is never, ever going to work

1:27:53

out. And resigned myself to that. Rick

1:27:55

asked for some work of mine

1:27:59

to be included. included in the

1:28:01

journal as evidence of my credentials

1:28:03

for being a juror. And

1:28:06

the two biggest projects that I had done

1:28:08

at the time were the Burger King identity

1:28:10

and the Star Wars identity. And so I

1:28:12

sent those in as my credentials.

1:28:14

They were printed in the journal, and that

1:28:16

was the end of that. Or

1:28:19

so I thought. May 2nd, 2003. I

1:28:25

get a link from a friend of mine. She

1:28:28

sends me an email and she's like, read this

1:28:30

in the privacy of your own home, preferably

1:28:33

with a big drink. And-

1:28:35

Boy, what a set up. I

1:28:37

know, right? And I am not one that

1:28:39

likes surprises or anticipation. I need instant gratification.

1:28:41

So I don't wait to go home. I

1:28:44

don't wait to get a drink. I click

1:28:46

into the link at my desk in my

1:28:48

office and come to a letter,

1:28:50

an open letter to AIGA written

1:28:52

by a designer named Felix Sockwell

1:28:55

on this thing called Speak

1:28:57

Up. And Speak Up

1:29:00

was one of the first web

1:29:02

blogs and the first

1:29:04

design blog. And the

1:29:07

letter chastises

1:29:09

AIGA for

1:29:12

including me, Debbie

1:29:14

Millman, as a juror

1:29:16

in their annual competition. What is

1:29:19

supposed to be the most prestigious

1:29:21

competition in the country. And

1:29:23

accused me of not only being a corporate

1:29:26

clown, but also

1:29:28

because of the work I do, they

1:29:31

called me a she-devil. A

1:29:33

she-devil. Wow. And

1:29:37

proceeded to take my entire career down.

1:29:40

And it was a pylon. So not

1:29:42

only was the open letter quite harsh,

1:29:44

but then there was the pylon of

1:29:46

comments that happened in the early days

1:29:48

of blogging. Remember that? Oh, yes.

1:29:50

So- I'm so glad that hateful

1:29:52

comments are a thing of the past. But

1:29:56

yes, oh yes. Intimately, intimately familiar.

1:30:01

And I'm reading this and my jaw

1:30:03

is agape and I am just in

1:30:06

a state of catatonia.

1:30:11

I couldn't move. I

1:30:14

was ashamed, embarrassed, terrified

1:30:16

that people in my office would see it,

1:30:18

that the reputation of the firm

1:30:21

was being sullied by me. And

1:30:25

I didn't know what to do. I

1:30:28

was despondent. I remember walking home

1:30:30

from work that day crying,

1:30:33

thinking that I had to quit, I had

1:30:35

to leave the design business and my career

1:30:37

was over. This career that I

1:30:39

had finally found for myself was now

1:30:41

officially over. And

1:30:44

I honestly did not know what to

1:30:46

do, Tim. I felt like if I

1:30:48

wrote in that it would seem defensive,

1:30:50

that it would bring more attention to

1:30:52

this story. I felt that if

1:30:55

I didn't write in that I would be

1:30:58

missing an opportunity to at least contribute

1:31:00

to the conversation with a point of

1:31:02

view that might be different than theirs.

1:31:05

I didn't know what to do. And looking back on

1:31:07

it now, I'm actually really ashamed of what I did because

1:31:10

it was disingenuous. But at the time, it

1:31:12

was the only thing that I felt

1:31:15

I could do. And so

1:31:17

a few days after the story broke

1:31:20

and the comments piled in, I contributed

1:31:22

and my first comment

1:31:24

was, you're not going to approve of

1:31:26

this. Oh, we'll see. I

1:31:29

wrote, what a cool discussion. I

1:31:31

love it. I'm

1:31:33

sorry. I'm

1:31:36

so sorry. The

1:31:39

cool girl had not come out at that time, but

1:31:41

had it been out, I would have said, that's what

1:31:43

I was trying to be. I was trying to be

1:31:45

the cool girl. Nothing matters.

1:31:48

I could eat five chili dogs and I don't gain weight. I'm

1:31:52

quoting the book. So yeah,

1:31:54

I came in and that's what I said,

1:31:56

but I ended up having the

1:31:59

best possible. pair

1:34:00

of handcuffs, yeah. Well

1:34:02

said. But I'd still, you know, I'd

1:34:04

go home and look, but whatever. A couple

1:34:07

weeks later, the founder

1:34:09

of Speak Up, a young man about 23

1:34:11

years old named

1:34:14

Armin Vitt, reached out to

1:34:16

me. He wrote me an email and

1:34:18

he apologized. He didn't apologize for

1:34:20

calling my work a pair of turds, which is

1:34:22

what he did. I didn't realize

1:34:24

turds came in pairs. Shows

1:34:26

what I know. Ah,

1:34:30

you. But he, so he

1:34:32

apologized for the bullying and for the

1:34:34

unprofessional way in which the conversation ensued,

1:34:36

as opposed to he made it very

1:34:38

clear that he still thought my work

1:34:40

was a pair of turds, but he

1:34:42

didn't feel that it was right the

1:34:44

way that I had been spoken to.

1:34:47

And I took a lot of care in responding

1:34:50

to him. I accepted his apology. But

1:34:52

at the time, I was really

1:34:54

fascinated by this whole blogging

1:34:57

thing. It was really interesting to

1:34:59

me, this sort of real time

1:35:01

communication, holding people accountable. And I

1:35:03

wrote him this sort of diatribe

1:35:05

about it. And he responded and

1:35:07

said, well, would you like to write

1:35:09

for the site? And

1:35:11

I was like, whoa, didn't expect that

1:35:14

one. So I said, yes.

1:35:16

And I started writing for Speak

1:35:18

Up. The Darth Vader column. Well,

1:35:20

what was so interesting about the

1:35:22

experience, Tim, was that the what

1:35:24

the Speak Uppers were calling the

1:35:26

precious design world, the AIGA world,

1:35:28

they had already rejected me. And

1:35:30

now the renegades, the anti AIGA

1:35:32

contingent, they were rejecting me. So

1:35:34

at that moment, I actually felt

1:35:36

like the most hated woman in

1:35:38

graphic design. Masterless

1:35:41

samurai. Where to? Exactly.

1:35:45

So what happened after that was it was really surreal.

1:35:47

And this is why I say that

1:35:49

what felt like at the time in

1:35:51

May of 2003, to be the lowest

1:35:53

point of my professional career, actually became

1:35:56

the catalyst upon which everything else has

1:35:58

been I started

1:36:00

writing for Speak Up, and all of

1:36:02

a sudden I started to have that

1:36:04

sense of what I had been originally

1:36:06

searching for in my efforts

1:36:08

with Speak Up. I felt like I was

1:36:11

part of something bigger than myself. I felt

1:36:13

like I was part of this sort of

1:36:15

renegade group of misfits that were trying to

1:36:17

change the world through graphic design, criticism, and

1:36:20

online conversations. We all decided that year

1:36:22

in the fall of 2003 that we

1:36:24

were going to go as a group

1:36:27

of sort of guerrilla Speak

1:36:29

Up writers to the

1:36:31

upcoming AIGA annual conference in

1:36:34

Vancouver. We were going

1:36:36

to give out this little brochure

1:36:38

that Armin had put together called

1:36:40

Stop Being Sheep, which was a

1:36:42

riff on the great typographer Eric

1:36:44

Speekerman's book Stop Stealing Sheep, which

1:36:46

is about letter spacing. You

1:36:51

know, thin slicing here to the very best

1:36:53

of our ability. We

1:36:56

went with this little brochure en route

1:36:58

to the conference. So

1:37:01

these people then ended up accepting you,

1:37:03

the people who had previously vilified you?

1:37:05

You were... The people that

1:37:07

had previously vilified me not only accepted

1:37:09

me, but over the years Armin

1:37:12

and his wife, Briany, and

1:37:14

I have become such good

1:37:16

friends that I am now

1:37:18

the godmother to their eldest

1:37:20

daughter. Wow. So sort

1:37:23

of similar to that Robert Edelstein story back

1:37:25

when I was in college where he rejected

1:37:27

me or what I thought was a rejection

1:37:30

of me, then ultimately became one of my

1:37:32

lifelong friendships and now Armin and Briany are

1:37:35

also family at this point, family.

1:37:37

Amazing. So I interrupted

1:37:39

though. You're en route with this

1:37:41

group of heretics and a pile

1:37:44

of brochures or pamphlets. Right,

1:37:46

because brochures change the world, you know that. And

1:37:49

I'm sitting next to people that are

1:37:51

also... There was at that time one

1:37:53

direct flight from New York to Vancouver.

1:38:00

share and I'm sitting next to

1:38:02

a woman who is beautiful and

1:38:05

elegant and I'm wearing sweatpants and carrying

1:38:07

a bag of McDonald's breakfast

1:38:09

you know and the only people that like

1:38:12

the way McDonald's breakfast smell of the people

1:38:14

eating it not the people smelling it. True

1:38:18

fact. You

1:38:21

know I don't know why I didn't think that

1:38:23

I would see people that I knew on this

1:38:25

flight I was well in any case so I

1:38:27

start talking to this woman next to me and

1:38:29

turns out she's going to the conference as well.

1:38:32

I asked her what she does

1:38:34

she says she's a writer at print magazine I

1:38:36

tell her about speak up she's all interested in

1:38:38

what we're doing she gives me I tell her

1:38:40

that we're having this get-together this party over the

1:38:42

course of the conference she's I'd like to invite

1:38:45

her she gives me a card without looking at

1:38:47

it I put it into my bag we

1:38:49

talk through a couple hours and then we

1:38:51

go off into our own thing with whatever

1:38:53

else we were doing on the flight when

1:38:56

I get to my room in Vancouver I

1:38:58

take her card out of my bag and

1:39:00

I see that she's the editor-in-chief choice writer

1:39:02

K. I

1:39:05

invite her to the party she comes and

1:39:07

we start a correspondence I had

1:39:10

I harbored this hope that maybe I

1:39:12

could write for print magazine one day

1:39:14

and a couple of months later she

1:39:17

writes me and asks me if I

1:39:19

want to participate in something she's putting

1:39:21

together for the upcoming how conference the

1:39:23

next year in San Diego and

1:39:26

at the time reality TV had just

1:39:28

sort of burgeoned

1:39:30

into culture and there was

1:39:33

a very popular TV show called Iron Chef about

1:39:36

cooking in real time in the audience

1:39:38

voting and she wanted to do a

1:39:40

riff on that called ironic chef where

1:39:42

three designers would create work

1:39:44

on stage in real time and the audience

1:39:47

would vote this to me sounded

1:39:49

like the definition of hell and

1:39:53

just to clarify for people print magazine

1:39:56

is actually called print it

1:39:58

is called magazine it's It is

1:40:01

called Print Magazine. It's the oldest graphic design magazine

1:40:03

in the country. It's 75 years old. It

1:40:06

has won, I think, five magazine

1:40:08

awards, which is the highest honor

1:40:10

and Fe, I believe it's

1:40:12

called, that a magazine can win. It's

1:40:16

a remarkable magazine and I had

1:40:18

this dream someday writing something for

1:40:21

it. So, ironic chef. Yes,

1:40:23

ironic chef. Debbie Milven's personal version of

1:40:25

Hell. Yeah. I'm afraid to say

1:40:27

no. I feel like if I say no,

1:40:30

I'm never going to be offered an opportunity to do anything

1:40:32

with Joyce again. So, I say yes

1:40:34

and I'm further humiliated when I get to San

1:40:36

Diego, when I realize that I have

1:40:38

to wear a chef's outfit on stage.

1:40:44

There are pictures of this, by the way. I'm not

1:40:46

lying or exaggerating. So, I go

1:40:48

through with this. I am on stage

1:40:50

with the MC Steve Heller, who I

1:40:52

had never met. Steve Heller is one

1:40:55

of the world's foremost design critics. He was

1:40:57

the art director of the New York Times

1:41:00

Book Review for 30 years. He

1:41:02

started numerous programs at the School of

1:41:04

Visual Arts, graduate programs, and

1:41:06

he's written about 170 books about

1:41:09

design and graphic designers. He

1:41:12

is the judge. I am terribly intimidated because

1:41:14

he is Steve Heller, one of the greatest

1:41:16

people that has ever lived. And

1:41:20

there are three of us. I come in second,

1:41:22

which is not terrible. I don't win, but I

1:41:24

don't lose. And in another

1:41:26

aberrant moment of courage, I asked Steve, because he

1:41:28

was nice to me that day, if he'd want

1:41:30

to have lunch in New York City when we

1:41:32

were back, he lived in New York City as

1:41:34

well. He agrees. We

1:41:37

go to lunch. I was so intimidated. I

1:41:39

had a cheat sheet that I'd prepared of

1:41:41

topics in which I could discuss with Steve.

1:41:43

I wrote it on a paper napkin, put

1:41:46

it in my lap, and I

1:41:48

could refer to it if I

1:41:50

choked and knew not what to say next.

1:41:53

In any case, I had some book

1:41:55

ideas. Steve told me they

1:41:57

were both bad. I

1:42:01

went away a little bit discouraged, but still happy that I

1:42:04

had met him and he told me that I'd get a

1:42:06

book just to be patient. Four

1:42:09

months later, a publisher calls at the recommendation

1:42:11

of Stephen Heller with a book that

1:42:14

he had turned down. They had wanted him

1:42:16

to write with the horrific title, How to

1:42:18

Think Like a Great Graphic Designer. Once

1:42:21

again, I think if I don't say yes

1:42:23

to this, I'm never going to be asked for anything again. I

1:42:26

take on this book, but I ask them if

1:42:28

I could do it in a different way because

1:42:31

I didn't believe that there was just one way

1:42:33

for a great graphic designer to think. There were

1:42:35

myriad ways. Could I interview

1:42:37

great graphic designers and

1:42:39

reveal how they think? They agreed and

1:42:41

that became my first book. In

1:42:44

the meantime, Joyce, writer of

1:42:46

K, the editor of Print Magazine, reaches out

1:42:48

and asks me if I'd like to write

1:42:50

a review about Wally

1:42:52

Olin's then upcoming

1:42:55

book on branding. I agree. I

1:42:57

write my first piece for Print Magazine that year and

1:43:00

I've written for every single issue

1:43:02

since. 13

1:43:05

years later, two years ago, I was

1:43:07

appointed the editorial and creative director of

1:43:09

Print Magazine. Well, it seems like

1:43:12

those brochures did play a role. That's

1:43:15

just the start of it, Tim. If it weren't

1:43:17

for Speak Up and that story, I was then

1:43:20

contacted by a fledgling

1:43:22

internet radio network called

1:43:24

Voice America in 2004

1:43:26

shortly after a piece that Mark Kingsley

1:43:28

and I wrote about election graphics that

1:43:30

kind of went viral. They

1:43:33

wanted me to host a

1:43:35

show about branding. I

1:43:37

was worried that if I said no, I'd never

1:43:40

get another opportunity again and asked if I could

1:43:42

sort of do it about branding, but maybe do

1:43:44

it more about design and pitch

1:43:46

this idea to them about Design

1:43:48

Matters, a radio network

1:43:51

show. They said

1:43:53

yes. Just when I was beginning to

1:43:55

think, ooh, I might get rich from this, they told

1:43:57

me that I needed to pay them for the

1:43:59

end. living

1:48:00

graphic designer. He's in

1:48:02

his 80s. He is

1:48:04

responsible for the I Heart New York

1:48:07

logo. He did that

1:48:09

iconic Bob Dylan poster of

1:48:11

Bob Dylan in profile with

1:48:13

the streams of colorful

1:48:15

hair. He is one

1:48:17

of the founders of New York magazine. The

1:48:20

list goes on and on. He's had

1:48:22

more impact and created some of the

1:48:24

most memorable, well-known, and

1:48:27

iconic brands and identities in

1:48:29

the world. My

1:48:31

relationship with Milton really began when I

1:48:33

took a class of his at the

1:48:35

School of Visual Arts. His summer intensive

1:48:38

in the summer of 2005. I had already interviewed

1:48:42

him for Design Matters, but

1:48:44

it was over the phone. And while

1:48:46

I cherished that interview, it was one

1:48:48

of my very, very early interviews. So

1:48:51

I'm somewhat gun-shy to send people to

1:48:53

listen to that one because it's so

1:48:55

early in my journey as a podcaster.

1:48:58

But in any case, I took this class with him. And

1:49:00

that class, you

1:49:03

know, it's interesting about how we started

1:49:05

the show talking about my eight-year-old drawing

1:49:07

and you talking about your friend who

1:49:10

had written this essay that then predicted

1:49:13

his life. Milton taught this summer intensive, I

1:49:15

think, for about 40 or 50 years. And

1:49:17

he used to say that it was one

1:49:19

of the most important things that he did.

1:49:21

He's not teaching it anymore. He had

1:49:24

us do an exercise in that class where

1:49:27

we had to envision the life

1:49:29

that we could have if

1:49:32

we pursued everything that we

1:49:34

wanted with the certainty that whatever it

1:49:36

is that we wanted, we would succeed.

1:49:39

I wrote an essay in July of

1:49:41

2005. It was supposed to be a five-year plan.

1:49:47

And he asked us to

1:49:49

dream big and not to

1:49:51

edit and said that it had

1:49:53

a bit of a magical

1:49:55

quality that he experienced with his

1:49:58

students over and over. to

1:50:00

be careful what we wished for. And

1:50:03

I created this essay

1:50:05

with these long-ranging, far-fetched

1:50:07

goals that I can

1:50:09

tell you now, 12 years later, have almost

1:50:13

all come true. It is spooky,

1:50:15

spooky. And so that's an exercise I

1:50:17

do now with my students. Milton has

1:50:19

had one of the most profound impacts

1:50:22

on my life, aside from the profound

1:50:24

impact he's had on the world. I

1:50:26

feel really, really lucky that I

1:50:29

have been a student of his and have

1:50:31

gotten to interview him now numerous times and

1:50:33

feel that my relationship with him is certainly

1:50:35

one of the luckiest things that's ever happened

1:50:38

to me. Can you

1:50:40

describe the exercise as you

1:50:42

do it with your students now? Well,

1:50:45

I teach undergrad and graduate classes at the

1:50:47

School of Visual Arts. I run a master's

1:50:49

in branding program at the School of Visual

1:50:51

Arts, which I was

1:50:53

given this opportunity via Steve Heller, who

1:50:56

I, again, would not have met had

1:50:58

that whole speak up experience not happened.

1:51:00

So yet another thing, every single thing

1:51:02

that I'm doing now in my life,

1:51:04

Tim, stems from that

1:51:07

experience. Well, so just to

1:51:09

underscore another theme, he

1:51:13

had, in some sense, you could interpret

1:51:15

it as rejected two of your book

1:51:17

ideas, even though he was nice to

1:51:19

you and went out to lunch with

1:51:21

you. But now, later on

1:51:23

down the line, you kept that relationship

1:51:25

and lands you at SVA. Absolutely.

1:51:29

I mean, Steve is one of

1:51:31

the most generous and

1:51:34

engaging people I have had the privilege

1:51:36

of knowing. And I often tease Steve

1:51:39

and say that he's my fairy godfather

1:51:41

because he's the only person in my

1:51:43

life, or maybe one of two people

1:51:45

in my life now, that I could

1:51:48

say has just

1:51:50

been, he has this

1:51:53

sort of generosity that is all

1:51:55

about, here, take this, do that,

1:51:57

make this happen. Do

1:54:00

you have a car? Do you have a

1:54:02

boat? Do you have, talk about your career? What do

1:54:04

you want? What are you reading? What are you making?

1:54:06

What excites you? What is your health like? And right

1:54:08

this day, this one day, 10 years from now, so

1:54:10

one day in the winter of 2027, what

1:54:27

does your whole day look like? Start from

1:54:29

the minute you wake up, brush your teeth,

1:54:32

have your coffee or tea, all the

1:54:34

way through till when you tuck yourself in

1:54:37

at night. What is that day like

1:54:39

for you? Dream big. Dream

1:54:43

without any fear. Write

1:54:45

it all down. You don't have to share

1:54:47

it with anyone other than yourself. Put

1:54:50

your whole heart into it. And

1:54:53

write like there's no tomorrow. Write like

1:54:55

your life depends on it because it

1:54:57

does. And

1:55:00

then read it once a

1:55:02

year and see what happens. It's

1:55:05

magic. It's magic. It is

1:55:07

a magical... I love this exercise. I need to do

1:55:09

this. I'm not asking for some hypothetical listener. Listeners, I

1:55:11

love you guys, but this is also for me. It

1:55:15

is astounding. And I do this now

1:55:17

with all of my students. But

1:55:19

I can't begin to tell you how

1:55:22

many letters I get from students from

1:55:24

10 years ago that are like, Debbie,

1:55:26

it all came true. How did this

1:55:28

happen? And I

1:55:30

am so thrilled that

1:55:33

these things can make

1:55:35

a difference. And this goes back

1:55:37

to the earlier part of our conversation about

1:55:39

my own fears about what I could or

1:55:42

would or should become. And

1:55:45

the idea that at that

1:55:47

same time in my life, that intersection on

1:55:49

Bleecker Street and Sixth Avenue peering deep into

1:55:51

my future and not knowing that anything was

1:55:53

possible for me to give

1:55:55

somebody at that same stage in

1:55:57

their life or any stage, really.

1:55:59

but particularly at that vulnerable stage

1:56:02

when you are so worried about

1:56:04

what you can or can't become.

1:56:06

To give somebody that sliver of a

1:56:08

dream, of a hope that this could

1:56:11

happen, and have them declare

1:56:13

what they want, I

1:56:16

think is a remarkable exercise. That's why

1:56:18

I call it your tenure plan for

1:56:20

a remarkable life. How

1:56:23

long was your essay? Is there

1:56:25

any consistency to length or

1:56:27

their guidelines or is it as long as

1:56:29

it takes? And two pages, some are 20

1:56:31

pages. Some are two pages, some are 20

1:56:33

pages. I think the longer it is,

1:56:36

the more likely it is to

1:56:39

be affirmed for some reason. I find the more

1:56:42

care you put into it, the more care and

1:56:44

detail you put in. Oh

1:56:46

doggy. That's doggy,

1:56:48

yeah. That's my Molly, sorry,

1:56:50

she's excited about this exercise, please give me that. Clearly.

1:56:54

I think that the more care you put into it, likely

1:56:56

the more success you'll have coming out of

1:56:58

it. Mine was, I wrote it

1:57:00

in a journal that I was keeping at the time, so

1:57:03

it was about five by seven and it was probably about

1:57:05

10 handwritten, big

1:57:07

handwriting, I had big handwriting, 10

1:57:09

big handwriting pages. And it

1:57:11

was the whole day. And

1:57:14

then, because I was really excited about it

1:57:16

and because I love lists, I made a

1:57:18

list of everything that I wanted to come

1:57:20

true. Well, I tell you,

1:57:22

I think that might

1:57:24

be a good place to wrap

1:57:26

up this part one, which I

1:57:28

think we may have more conversations

1:57:31

in us. I

1:57:33

have so many questions I'd still like to ask, but

1:57:36

I think that is, given people

1:57:38

have a primacy and recency bias,

1:57:40

I want them to remember this

1:57:43

exercise as one of the

1:57:46

actionable recommendations that they can

1:57:48

certainly explore from this

1:57:50

interview. And there's so much, but let

1:57:52

me ask before I let you

1:57:54

go, and I'll

1:57:56

ask where people can find you and so on, learn

1:57:58

more about your work. out

2:00:00

at Sterling and then leave and

2:00:02

transition to working at SVA

2:00:04

and doing all of the personal

2:00:06

projects that I had been talking for so long

2:00:08

about doing. So

2:00:11

the five years happened and we

2:00:13

had a really wonderful successful earnout, so

2:00:15

there was no excuse for me

2:00:17

to continue on the same path.

2:00:19

And it was time to make

2:00:21

that change. And

2:00:24

the last thing I wanted was to end up

2:00:26

like the characters in Revolutionary Road, that remarkable book

2:00:28

where people talk about making these changes their whole

2:00:30

lives and then never ever do.

2:00:33

But I became terrified. I became

2:00:35

terrified that if I made this change

2:00:38

that I would not have

2:00:41

financial stability anymore, that

2:00:43

I would not be able

2:00:46

to fulfill all of the dreams that I had and would have

2:00:48

to confront that. And so five years turned into

2:00:50

six years and six years turned into seven years.

2:00:54

And just at a point where I was

2:00:56

starting to think about really doing

2:00:58

it, sort of like Al Pacino in

2:01:00

Godfather 3, I was offered

2:01:02

an opportunity to take over as CEO

2:01:04

of the company. Simon Williams, then

2:01:07

CEO, was looking to become chairman and needed to

2:01:09

appoint a new CEO and he came to me

2:01:11

and asked me if I wanted the job. And

2:01:14

here it was. This is the big

2:01:16

decision of a life. Do I

2:01:18

become the CEO and have

2:01:20

this amazing continuation of money

2:01:22

and career and security and

2:01:25

everything else that is

2:01:27

conventionally approved of? Or

2:01:30

do I say no? Actually, I am

2:01:33

not going to double down. I am going to

2:01:36

live the way in which I

2:01:38

have been saying I wanted to

2:01:40

with more freedom and more opportunity

2:01:42

to do personal projects and pro

2:01:45

bono projects and give back. And

2:01:48

I had to decide. And it took me four months

2:01:50

to decide. Simon Williams finally said to me, Debbie, anything

2:01:52

that takes you four months to decide probably means you

2:01:54

don't want to do it. And

2:01:57

it was the hardest decision of my life. But

2:02:00

I turned it down, I turned the CEO

2:02:02

job down. And then two things

2:02:04

happened. First of all, one

2:02:06

of the things that I realized was that I was

2:02:11

in this trapeze. And

2:02:13

rather than just let go of the

2:02:15

trapeze and do something

2:02:17

else, I had every single

2:02:19

crook of my body holding

2:02:22

on to some other trapeze. And

2:02:25

that there was this sense

2:02:27

of, if I am not doing enough, I

2:02:29

am not worthy. If I am not making

2:02:32

enough, I am not worthy. If I am

2:02:34

not producing enough, I am not worthy. And

2:02:37

suddenly I had to not just let

2:02:39

go of the trapeze, but let go

2:02:41

of the entire apparatus. And

2:02:45

I have realized now

2:02:48

two things. One, most people live

2:02:50

in a world of scarcity. We think

2:02:52

that all we have now is all we will ever have.

2:02:54

And if we give something up, we will just have less.

2:02:57

What ends up happening is that we don't

2:02:59

think about all the possibilities of things that

2:03:02

could come up if we give

2:03:04

ourselves openings to receive them. And so now,

2:03:06

as opposed to having less than what I

2:03:08

thought, I have way more because I have

2:03:10

all these new things that I'm doing that

2:03:12

I never would have thought possible. Second,

2:03:16

that hard decisions are only

2:03:18

hard when you're in the process

2:03:20

of making them. Once you make them, they're

2:03:23

not hard anymore. Then it's just

2:03:25

life and freedom. And

2:03:28

it's an extraordinary experience that I really would like

2:03:30

to share with your listeners, with

2:03:32

our listeners. It's such an

2:03:35

important discussion on many

2:03:37

levels. And I want, I'm

2:03:40

thinking it's worth repeating a few things.

2:03:42

And certainly this echoes in my experience

2:03:44

as well. One, that

2:03:48

agonizing over the decision is often

2:03:50

harder than whatever the outcome of

2:03:52

the decision will be. And

2:03:56

for that matter, if you make, in many cases,

2:03:58

not all, but in many cases, if you. make

2:04:00

a decision and you decide

2:04:02

that it's not the right decision for

2:04:04

you, you can quit. You can do

2:04:06

something else. It's not a permanent sentence

2:04:09

necessarily. And also, this

2:04:11

is something that I've had to learn and

2:04:13

relearn many times in my life, which is

2:04:15

if it's taken you that long to make

2:04:17

a decision, you

2:04:20

probably don't and shouldn't, don't

2:04:23

want to and shouldn't do whatever it

2:04:25

is that you're agonizing over with pro

2:04:27

and conless trying to justify in

2:04:29

some fashion. It's

2:04:31

in both of those points, I think

2:04:33

are so, so important. I also think

2:04:35

that if you're waiting for something to

2:04:37

feel right before you do it, if

2:04:39

you're waiting for a sense of security

2:04:41

or confidence, that those

2:04:43

things are sort

2:04:45

of like being on a hedonistic treadmill. If you

2:04:47

think you need enough of this before you do

2:04:50

that, when you achieve whatever that is you think

2:04:52

you need, you're going to then up the ante

2:04:54

and you're never, ever going to be

2:04:57

satisfied with whatever it

2:04:59

is you think you need before

2:05:01

you do something if it's not

2:05:04

something that is real. If

2:05:06

you think, oh, I need this much money before I

2:05:09

do this, when you get that much money, then you're

2:05:11

going to realize, oh, I actually think I need this

2:05:13

much more and it's just going to be this carrot

2:05:15

in front of you that you're agonizing over trying to

2:05:17

reach. And then the other

2:05:19

thing is I'm going to quote Danny

2:05:21

Shapiro here, the great writer Danny Shapiro,

2:05:23

if you're waiting for confidence. And she,

2:05:25

I asked her once about confidence and

2:05:28

she said that confidence is highly, highly

2:05:30

overrated and that most confident

2:05:32

people or overly confident people tend

2:05:34

to be kind of annoying. And

2:05:36

she said what she felt was

2:05:38

more important than confidence was courage.

2:05:41

And I fully, fully agree taking

2:05:43

that first step. Confidence really only

2:05:45

comes from repeated attempts at doing

2:05:47

something successfully. But in

2:05:49

order to take that first step, you need

2:05:51

courage. And that's much more

2:05:54

important than confidence. So for anybody that's waiting

2:05:56

for the confidence to show up, take the

2:05:58

first step in a moment of courage. even

2:06:00

if it's ever encouraged to come full circle

2:06:03

in this conversation. Such good

2:06:05

advice. It reminds me of something that

2:06:07

the brother, Kamal Ravikant, of another

2:06:09

friend of mine, Naval Ravikant, told

2:06:12

me, so Naval is a very,

2:06:14

very successful entrepreneur and

2:06:16

investor, among other things. Very,

2:06:18

very good writer as well, as is his brother

2:06:20

Kamal, who just had a novel come out. But Naval

2:06:23

said to his brother, if I

2:06:25

always did what I was qualified to do, I would be

2:06:27

pushing a broom somewhere. Well said. And

2:06:29

I thought that was very, very encouraging. Touche.

2:06:32

Debbie, I have so much fun every time we

2:06:35

get to spend time together. Where can people find out

2:06:37

more about you? Where

2:06:39

can they learn more about your work? Where

2:06:42

would you like people to say hello on social, if

2:06:44

that, and I'll put all of this in the show

2:06:46

notes for everybody. Sure, absolutely. I'm Debbie

2:06:48

Milliman on Twitter and Instagram. You

2:06:51

can see more about my program at the School

2:06:53

of Visual Arts at the School of Visual Arts.

2:06:56

You can see my program at the School of Visual Arts at

2:06:58

SVA.edu and debbiemilliman.com,

2:07:00

where you can listen to all my podcasts

2:07:03

and see my visual essays and my books

2:07:05

and so on and so forth. For

2:07:07

people who would be novices or

2:07:09

new entrants into

2:07:11

the world of say graphic design, recognizing that

2:07:13

your podcast is about a lot more than

2:07:15

that, which episode or

2:07:18

episodes would you suggest they start with? I

2:07:21

would suggest that they start with Chris

2:07:23

Ware. He is an extraordinary

2:07:25

graphic novelist. It's one of

2:07:28

the most favorite episodes that

2:07:30

I've ever conducted. Have

2:07:32

you spelled his last name? W-A-R-E.

2:07:37

And from there, some of my favorite

2:07:39

episodes over the last year, aside from

2:07:41

my episode with you, which I cherish,

2:07:44

my episodes with Amanda Palmer, my

2:07:46

episode with Alain de Botton, my episode

2:07:48

with Christa Tippett, Nico Mouli,

2:07:51

the great composer. Those are

2:07:53

all episodes in the last year that I'm most proud

2:07:55

of. Debbie, you're a rock star.

2:07:57

Thank you so much for the time.

2:08:00

Thank you. I really appreciate it. And

2:08:02

to everybody listening, as

2:08:05

always, you can find show notes,

2:08:07

links to resources, all sorts of

2:08:09

things that we talked about, and

2:08:11

maybe more at 4hourworkweek.com/podcast. And

2:08:14

until next time, thank you for listening.

2:08:18

Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one

2:08:20

more thing before you take off, and that

2:08:22

is Five Bullet Friday. Would you

2:08:24

enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday

2:08:26

that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between

2:08:30

one and a half and two million people

2:08:32

subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short

2:08:34

newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy

2:08:36

to sign up, easy to cancel. It

2:08:38

is basically a half page that I send

2:08:40

out every Friday to share the coolest

2:08:42

things I've found or discovered or have started

2:08:45

exploring over that week. It's kind of

2:08:47

like my diary of cool things. It

2:08:49

often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading,

2:08:52

albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of

2:08:54

tech tricks and so on that get

2:08:56

sent to me by my friends, including

2:08:59

a lot of podcast guests. And

2:09:01

these strange esoteric things end up in

2:09:03

my field and then I test them and then

2:09:06

I share them with you. So

2:09:08

if that sounds fun, again, it's very short,

2:09:10

a little tiny bite of goodness before you

2:09:12

head off for the weekend, something to think

2:09:15

about. If you'd like to try

2:09:17

it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday, type that

2:09:19

into your browser, tim.blog slash

2:09:21

Friday, drop in your email and you'll get

2:09:23

the very next one. Thanks

2:09:26

for listening. This episode is brought to

2:09:28

you by 8Sleep. I

2:09:30

have been using 8Sleep Pod Cover for

2:09:32

years now. Why? Well, by simply

2:09:34

adding it to your existing mattress on top like a

2:09:36

fitted sheet, you can automatically cool down

2:09:38

or warm up each side of your

2:09:40

bed. 8Sleep recently launched the newest

2:09:42

generation of the pod and I'm excited to test

2:09:45

it out, Pod 4

2:09:47

Ultra. It cools, it heats and now

2:09:49

it elevates automatically. More on that in

2:09:51

a second. First, Pod 4

2:09:53

Ultra can cool down each side of the bed as much as 20

2:09:56

degrees Fahrenheit below room temperature, keeping

2:09:58

you and your partner cool. even

2:10:00

in a heat wave. Or you can switch

2:10:03

it up depending on which of you is

2:10:05

heat sensitive. I am always more heat sensitive

2:10:07

pulling the sheets off, closing the windows, trying

2:10:09

to crank the AC down. This solves all

2:10:11

of that. Pod4 Ultra also introduces an adjustable

2:10:14

base that fits between your mattress and your

2:10:16

bed frame and adds reading and sleeping positions

2:10:18

for the best unwinding experience. And for those

2:10:20

snore heavy nights, the Pod can detect your

2:10:23

snoring and automatically lift your head by a

2:10:25

few degrees to improve air flow and stop

2:10:27

you or your partner from snoring. Plus with

2:10:29

Pod4 Ultra, you can leave your wearables

2:10:31

on the nightstand. You won't need them because

2:10:34

these types of metrics are integrated into

2:10:36

the Pod4 Ultra itself. They have imperceptible

2:10:38

sensors which track your sleep time, sleep

2:10:40

phases, and HRV. Their heart rate

2:10:42

tracking as just one example is at 99% accuracy. So

2:10:46

get your best night's sleep. Head to

2:10:48

8sleep.com/Tim and use code TIM to get

2:10:50

$350 off of the Pod4 Ultra. That's

2:10:55

8sleep, all spelled out 8sleep.com/Tim

2:10:57

and code TIM, T-I-M, to

2:11:00

get $350 off the Pod4 Ultra. They

2:11:03

currently ship to the United States, Canada,

2:11:05

the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. This

2:11:09

episode is brought to you by AG1, the

2:11:12

daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports

2:11:14

whole body health. I

2:11:16

view AG1 as comprehensive nutritional insurance and that

2:11:18

is nothing new. I actually recommended AG1 in

2:11:21

my 2010 best seller more

2:11:25

than a decade ago, the 4-Hour Body, and I

2:11:27

did not get paid to do so. I

2:11:30

simply loved the product and felt like

2:11:32

it was the ultimate nutritionally dense supplement

2:11:34

that you could use conveniently while on

2:11:36

run, which is, for me, a lot

2:11:38

of the time. I have been using

2:11:40

it a very, very long time indeed.

2:11:43

And I do get asked a lot what I

2:11:45

would take if I could only take one supplement.

2:11:47

And the true answer is invariably AG1. It

2:11:50

simply covers a ton of bases. I usually

2:11:52

drink it in the mornings and frequently take

2:11:54

their travel packs with me on the road.

2:11:57

So what is AG1? What is this stuff? AG1 is

2:11:59

a... science-driven formulation of vitamins,

2:12:01

probiotics, and whole food source nutrients.

2:12:03

In a single scoop, AG1 gives

2:12:06

you support for the brain, gut,

2:12:08

and immune system. Since

2:12:10

2010, they have improved the formula 52 times

2:12:13

in pursuit of making the

2:12:15

best foundational nutrition supplement possible

2:12:17

using rigorous standards and high-quality

2:12:20

ingredients. How many ingredients? 75,

2:12:23

and you would be hard-pressed to find

2:12:26

a more nutrient-dense formula on the market.

2:12:28

It has a multivitamin, multi-mineral superfood complex,

2:12:30

probiotics and prebiotics for gut

2:12:32

health, an antioxidant immune support

2:12:34

formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens

2:12:36

to help manage stress. Now,

2:12:38

I do my best, always,

2:12:40

to eat nutrient-dense meals. That

2:12:42

is the basic, basic,

2:12:45

basic, basic requirement. That

2:12:47

is why things are called supplements. Of

2:12:49

course, that's what I focus on, but it

2:12:51

is not always possible. It is not always

2:12:53

easy. So part of my

2:12:55

routine is using AG1 daily.

2:12:57

Both on the road, on the run, it

2:12:59

just makes it easy to get a lot

2:13:01

of nutrients at once and to sleep easy

2:13:04

knowing that I am checking a lot of

2:13:06

important boxes. So each morning, AG1. That's

2:13:09

just like brushing my teeth, part of

2:13:11

the routine. It's also NSF-certified for sports,

2:13:13

so professional athletes trust it to be

2:13:15

safe. And each pouch of

2:13:17

AG1 contains exactly what is on the

2:13:19

label, does not contain harmful levels of

2:13:21

microbes or heavy metals, and is free

2:13:23

of 280 banned substances. It's

2:13:26

the ultimate nutritional supplement in one

2:13:28

easy scoop. So take ownership of your

2:13:30

health and try AG1 today. You

2:13:33

will get a free one-year supply of

2:13:35

vitamin D and five free AG1 travel

2:13:37

packs with your first subscription purchase. So

2:13:40

learn more, check it out. Go

2:13:42

to www.drinkag1.com/Tim. That's

2:13:46

www.drinkag1, the number one. www.drinkag1.com/Tim.

2:13:51

Last time

2:13:53

www.drinkag1.com/Tim. www.drinkag1.com/Tim.

2:14:00

you