Tools of Titans

by Timothy Ferriss

Spirit animal: Chris Fussell = Middle-earth elf

  * * *

  General Stanley McChrystal & Chris Fussell

  Stanley McChrystal (TW: @StanMcChrystal, mcchrystalgroup.com) retired from the U.S. Army as a four-star general after more than 34 years of service. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates described McChrystal as “perhaps the finest warrior and leader of men in combat I ever met.”

  From 2003 to 2008, McChrystal served as commander of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), where he was credited with the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. His last assignment was as the commander of all American and Coalition forces in Afghanistan. He is a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and the co-founder of McChrystal Group, a leadership consulting firm.

  Chris Fussell (TW: @FussellChris) is a former U.S. Navy SEAL officer, former aide-de-camp (right-hand man) for General McChrystal, and a current senior executive at McChrystal Group.

  “The Purpose of Life Is a Life of Purpose.”

  This is Stan’s answer to “If you could put a billboard anywhere and write anything on it, what would it say?” It is a quote from Robert Byrne.

  One Primary Meal Per Day

  Stan rewards himself with a large dinner at night and doesn’t do well with smaller meals throughout the day.

  On Creating a “Red Team”

  STAN: “The concept of ‘red team’ is designed to test a plan. What happens is, as you develop a plan—you’ve got a problem and you develop a way to solve that problem—you fall in love with it. You start to dismiss the shortcomings of it, simply because, I think, that’s the way the mind works. . . . Sometimes you’re actually skipping over real challenges to it, or vulnerabilities in it, because you just want it to work. As we describe it, sometimes a plan can end up being a string of miracles, and that’s not a real solid plan. So red teaming is: You take people who aren’t wedded to the plan and [ask them,] ‘How would you disrupt this plan or how would you defeat this plan?’ If you have a very thoughtful red team, you’ll produce stunning results.”

  Everyone Says You’re Great, but . . .

  TIM: “I’ve heard stories of how you vet people for the McChrystal Group. And I’ve heard that you sometimes throw a statement out that people need to finish. Specifically, let’s say you were interviewing Chris, you’d say, ‘Everyone says Chris is great, but . . .’ and then you’d sit there in silence. Do you do that?”

  STAN: “I do do that. . . . It puts a person in the position of having to try to articulate what they think the perception of them by others is. Because there is a perception, and often in the vetting process, we’ll figure that out because we’ll get inputs from other people. But if you asked somebody and you said, ‘Everybody loves you but they don’t love this about you,’ or ‘they’d hire you but . . .’ [it accomplishes] a couple of things. One, it forces them to come to grips with ‘What is it people don’t love about me?’ And the second is, they’ve got to say it to you. It could be very common knowledge, but if they don’t have the courage to face up to it and tell somebody who’s thinking about hiring them, that’s a window into personality, I think.”

  TIM: “What are the answers that are a red flag to you, and what are the answers that are not a red flag? Or Chris, if you want to tackle . . .”

  CHRIS: “I always like to flip [the usual interview approach] on its head [and say something like,] ‘We’re a small community. You and I haven’t worked together, but I know a lot of your peers, and after this, we’re going to follow up with people who like you and who don’t like you. No one’s perfect, and I have my naysayers just like you do. What will the people who don’t hold you in highest regard say about you?’

  “To me, the most important thing was that they have an answer. A) It shows the courage to be able to address it, and B) it shows self-awareness that ‘I might be top peer-rated and have this great career, but there’s somebody out there, and here’s what they’d probably say. . . .’ They’d say I was self-serving at one time, or I appear too good on paper, or I’m lazy on these types of physical training, or whatever the case may be. Show me that, if you identify it, you’re working on it. I don’t care what you think about it. I just want to know that you’re aware of how other people view you.”

  ✸ Who do you think of when you hear the word “successful”?

  CHRIS: “I’ll answer it this way, and I don’t know if this gets to the exact point. I had a great mentor early on in my career give me advice that I’ve heeded until now, which is that you should have a running list of three people that you’re always watching: someone senior to you that you want to emulate, a peer who you think is better at the job than you are and who you respect, and someone subordinate who’s doing the job you did—one, two, or three years ago—better than you did it. If you just have those three individuals that you’re constantly measuring yourself off of, and you’re constantly learning from them, you’re going to be exponentially better than you are.”

  Stan’s Workout Routine

  Stan starts his workout at home, if he’s at home:

  Set of push-ups to max reps

  100 sit-ups, 3-minute plank, 2 to 3 minutes of yoga

  Set of push-ups to max reps

  50 to 100 crunch-like crossover (legs up), 2.5-minute plank, 2 to 3 minutes of yoga

  Set of push-ups to max reps

  50 to 100 crossover sit-ups (the first two variations combined), 2-minute plank, 2 to 3 minutes of yoga

  Set of push-ups to max reps

  60 flutter kicks, followed by static hold; 1.5-minute plank; set of crunches; 1-minute plank; 2 to 3 minutes of yoga

  STAN: “Then I’ll leave my house and go to the gym, because my gym opens at 5:30. It’s three blocks from my house.”

  TIM: “I assume we mean a.m.”

  STAN: “Yeah. If I get up at 4, I can do all that from 4:30 to about 5:20, then at 5:25, go down to my gym. When I get to the gym, I do four sets of pull-ups, alternated with inclined bench press and standing curls. [One-legged balance exercises are the rest break between them.] Then I’ll do a few other things, and I can do all that in 30, 35 minutes. So by 6:15 or 6:20, I can be done at the gym, head back home, get cleaned up, and then start work.”

  Why Exercise Is Important to Stan

  Aside from the self-image and performance aspects:

  “It also puts discipline in the day. I find that if the day is terrible, but I worked out, at the end of the day I’ll go, ‘Well, I had a good workout,’ almost no matter what happens. When the Rolling Stone article came out, it came out at about 1:30 in the morning. I found out about it, I made a couple of calls, I knew we had a big problem, and I put my clothes on and ran for an hour. Clear my head, stretch myself. It didn’t make it go away, but that is something that I do in those situations.”

  Three Practices for Mental Toughness

  The following was in response to “What are three tests or practices from the military that civilians could use to help develop mental toughness?”:

  STAN: “The first is to push yourself harder than you believe you’re capable of. You’ll find new depth inside yourself. The second is to put yourself in groups who share difficulties, discomfort. We used to call it ‘shared privation.’ You’ll find that when you have been through that kind of difficult environment, that you feel more strongly about that which you’re committed to. And finally, create some fear and make individuals overcome it.”

  TF: I think these three elements largely explain the exploding popularity of obstacle course racing like Spartan Race (see Joe De Sena, page 38) and World’s Toughest Mudder (see Amelia Boone, page 2).

  Advice to Your 30-Year-Old Self?

  STAN: “I think up through probably 35, I was very much a control freak, because the size of the organizations I commanded, and I was part of, were small enough where I could micromanage them. I had a fairly forceful personality, and if you worked hard and studied hard, you
could just about move all the chess pieces, no problem. Around age 35 to 40, as you get up to battalion level, which is about 600 people, suddenly, you’re going to have to lead it a different way, and what you’re really going to have to do is develop people. The advice I’d give to anyone young is it’s really about developing people who are going to do the work. Unless you are going to go do the task yourself, then the development time you spend on the people who are going to do that task, whether they are going to lead people doing it or whether they are actually going to do it, every minute you spend on that is leveraged, is exponential return.”

  For Those of Us Who Say We Don’t Have Time to Read . . .

  Stan consumes most of his books as audiobooks, a habit acquired overseas, as print books are cumbersome to lug around on deployment. He probably now “reads” via audio 70% of the time.

  STAN: “I learned to run with audiobooks. My mind will stay collected on it when I lift weights. . . . I also have a little set of speakers in my bathroom. So I go in in the morning, and I’m listening to one book there. I turn it on and [I’ll listen] while I brush my teeth, while I shave, while I put my PT clothes on, because my wife’s out in the bedroom. . . . I’ve found that I go through books very, very quickly, because if you’re working out an hour and a half a day, you actually go through books much faster than you would if you just had reading time. . . . I tend to like sweeping history stories of an era that’s 20, 30, 40 years, or big projects like the building of the Panama Canal, the building of the Boulder Dam [now known as the Hoover Dam], because they’ve got a beginning, middle, and end, and challenges. I will also do binge reading. I did seven or eight books on George Washington and other founding fathers, and because they’re all mutually overlapping, suddenly you know more about the era, and the new one is more interesting because it’s filling in holes. So I’ll binge on one subject for a while, and then on another subject.”

  ✸ Books to read for insight into the realities of combat?

  CHRIS: “Well, a classic in the special operations community is Gates of Fire, by Steven Pressfield. Really highly read. . . .”

  ✸ Stan’s most-gifted book

  “I have probably given the most copies of a book written in 1968 by Anton Myrer, called Once an Eagle. It’s a story of two characters, [who both] entered the military during the first World War, and it follows them up through the second World War into the postwar years.”

  ✸ Stan’s favorite film

  The Battle of Algiers. It takes about 15 minutes to pull you in, but be patient and stick with it. I put off watching this for months, and I wish I’d watched it immediately after Stan recommended it. This documentary-style film, shot in Algiers, recreates the increasingly violent events of 1957, as occupied Algeria fought for independence from France. It humanizes both sides and is extremely relevant to current events. On top of that, it explores the good and the bad of broader human nature.

  “You can tell the true character of a man by how his dog and his kids react to him.”

  “If you don’t believe in God, you should believe in the technology that’s going to make us immortal.”

  Spirit animal: Bald eagle

  * * *

  Shay Carl

  Shay Carl (TW/IG: @shaycarl, youtube.com/shaytards) got his first computer at age 27. He was a manual laborer and uploaded his first YouTube video while on break from a granite countertop job. Flash forward to today:

  His SHAYTARDS channel now has roughly 2.5 BILLION views. Celebs like Steven Spielberg have appeared alongside Shay and his family.

  He co-founded Maker Studios, which sold to Disney for nearly $1 billion.

  He has been married 13 years and has 5 kids.

  He’s lost more than 100 pounds since his overweight peak.

  Behind the Scenes

  Shay flew from Utah to California for our podcast together. In San Francisco, I roped him into a number of firsts, including AcroYoga (page 52) and getting whipped with branches at Russian baths.

  He is an investor in DietBet.com, which I’ve used with tens of thousands of fans without realizing he was involved. It forces you to put money on the line as an incentive to lose weight, and it works. Those who reach certain milestones “win” and receive a portion of the total pot. Players have lost more than 5 million pounds and DietBet has paid out more than $21 million.

  “The secrets to life are hidden behind the word ‘cliché.’”

  Shay recalled being on a specific bike ride during his rapid weight-loss period: “I remember exactly where I was. I thought to myself, ‘The secrets to life are hidden behind the word “cliché.”’ So any time you hear something that you think is a cliché, my tip to you is to perk your ears up and listen more carefully.” He had heard certain phrases like “Eat more vegetables” a million times, but ignored them for years, as it all seemed too simplistic. Ultimately, it was the simple that worked. He didn’t need sophisticated answers. They were right in front of him the whole time. What advice are you ignoring because you think it’s trite or clichéd? Can you mine it for any testable action?

  Learning from Your Future Self—An Exercise We Both Use

  I asked Shay what advice he’d give his 25-year-old self, and he replied with:

  “Maybe I would’ve said, ‘Drop out of college sooner’? But I don’t think I would change anything. . . . It’s easy to think, ‘Well, what would I tell my 25-year-old self?’ So then I think, ‘Well, if I’m 45 and I’m asked that question, what would I tell my 36-year-old self [how old Shay is currently]?’”

  TF: This prompted me to share a story with him, which I’ll repeat here in brief. I never write fiction, but one of the only pieces of writing I’ve lost that made me sad for an extended period was fiction. I wrote a short story about going skiing, retiring to the ski lodge to sip hot chocolate and wine, and ending up seated across the table from a wise old stranger. Several hours of conversation later, this stranger turns out to be my future self. I ask him for advice and he gives me the benefit of his 20/20 hindsight. It was a fun story to write, but—and this sounds a bit weird—I also got a lot of actionable, specific advice by going through the exercise. When I put my pen down, I was somewhat puzzled and thought, “I don’t know what I just did there, but it seems like a funky magic trick.” I later realized that the story line is similar to a spectacular piece written by Jorge Luis Borges entitled “The Other” (“El Otro”). When I told Shay this story, his eyes lit up. He jumped in with:

  “What you just explained is exactly what I was going to suggest. Think about how old you are right now and think about being a 10-year-older version of yourself. Then think, ‘What would I probably tell myself as an older version of myself?’ That is the wisdom that I think you found in that exercise. . . . [If you do this exercise and then start living the answers,] I think you’re going to grow exponentially faster than you would have otherwise.”

  Work Will Work When Nothing Else Will Work

  Shay is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon). On my podcast, he spoke publicly for the first time about battling and overcoming alcoholism:

  “It’s not easy to get better. It’s tough. Our natural inclination is toward addiction and toward the things that are easy. It’s easy to drink alcohol and take away the pain. It’s easy to not wake up in the morning and exercise. It’s easy to go through the drive-through and buy a Big Mac, right? What are you willing to do that is hard? I remember my Grandpa saying, ‘Work will work when nothing else will work.’”

  How Shay Currently Shoots Video

  Canon PowerShot G7 X camera and Final Cut Pro X. He thinks of his day as 3 acts and films it in thirds: morning, afternoon, evening. He captures 10 to 15 minutes total, and he never shoots for more than 2 minutes at a time.

  Two Approaches to Mood Elevation

  Shay explained to me how posting daily videos or “vlogging” (video + blogging) was cheap therapy:
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  “Physiologically, I could feel my body was different. . . . Just by sitting up straight, putting a smile on my face, and faking it until you make it, you actually do feel better. There’s real power in this.”

  TF: This inspired me to experiment with short vlogging for roughly 15 days for mood elevation. I made it as simple as possible, using my iPhone for a 10-minute Facebook Live video Q&A. I uploaded the FB videos to YouTube, and it was incredible how quickly a large repeat viewership formed, something I’d never achieved before. As both Casey Neistat (page 217) and Shay have explained to me: It’s about the relationship you build, not the production quality. The effects of “acting” more upbeat seemed to last at least 2 to 3 hours.

  Shay has another tactic for mood elevation, probably best used outside of the airport:

  “This might sound really crazy, but I’ll just look in the mirror and laugh at myself . . . break down this wall of being so pretentious about not being able to be silly. I think there’s a great power in not taking things so seriously.”

  ✸ Who comes to mind when you hear the word “successful”?

  “To me, the definition of success is being cool with your parents, your grandparents [if still alive], and your kids. Being able to navigate the difficult task of dealing with each other as human beings.”

  Care Bear Stare to $1 Billion Exit

  “[Maker Studios] just grew like wildfire. It was the first time that you had social influencers coming together. It was like a Care Bear stare, if you will. You know how all the Care Bears get together, and once they link and they Care Bear stare, it’s way stronger than just the individual Care Bear power? You get what I’m saying.”