Tools of Titans

by Timothy Ferriss

  TF: Look at whatever you’re afraid of and ask, “What is on the other side of fear, if I push through this?” The answer is generally nothing. There are few or no negative consequences, or they’re temporary. This touches upon Francis Ford Coppola’s lesson that we’ll explore later: Failure is not durable.

  * * *

  “When you raise your kids, you’re the bow, they’re the arrow, and you just try to aim them in the best direction that you can, and hopefully your aim isn’t too off. That’s what [my grandmother] did for me.”

  * * *

  For Those Impersonators Among You

  Jamie did nearly a dozen impersonations during our interview. Here’s one tip: “Start with Kermit the Frog, then add some swagger, and you got Sammy Davis Jr.”

  You Are Either Great or You Don’t Exist

  Jamie explained how disciplined Keenen Ivory Wayans was about writing jokes for In Living Color: “You were not allowed to come in and be half-assed. He’d pull you aside and say, ‘As a black comedian, you cannot be half-assed. You’re either great or you don’t exist.’ . . . He wrote for Eddie Murphy. He was around the greatest. He said, ‘I’m around the greatest, all the time, so that’s what we’re gonna do.’”

  TF: This applies far outside of comedy or racial lines. It’s never been easier to be a “creator,” and it’s never been harder to stand out. Good isn’t good enough.

  Learning to Speak Truth

  “I’m 10 years old, maybe. I think I’m in the fifth grade, 1976, President Carter. The preacher started preaching about homosexuality. I don’t know what it is. He’s saying God made Adam and Eve, God didn’t make Adam and Steve. It’s Southern, it’s Texas. My grandmother stood up and said, ‘You stop that,’ and the whole church stopped. ‘What’s that, Miss Talley?’ Now, her words, what she said next, was very interesting. ‘Let me tell you something. I’ve had this nursery school for 30 years, and I want to let all of you know that God makes sissies, too.’ The whole place went, ‘What?’ She said, ‘These little boys that I’ve watched since they could walk, they play by different music, and you stop that because you’re making it hard for them to navigate.’ Sits down.

  “My grandmother raised those people at church. [She taught the whole community’s children during the school year and] then, during the summer, you’d drop the kids off at my grandmother’s house and just let her keep them. She was very powerful in that sense.”

  Ed Sheeran Before He Became Famous

  “A young man by the name of Ed Sheeran slept on this carpet [he points at the floor, where we were recording] for like 6 weeks, trying to get his music career going. He came over from London. He heard about a live show that I do in L.A. He said, ‘I really want to do your live show, if it’s possible, because I have some music that I love.’ I’m thinking, ‘Do my live show?’ It’s mostly black, you know what I’m saying? It’s music people, really hardcore music people. They’re very finicky. People who have played for Stevie Wonder. I had Miranda Lambert one night. I had Babyface. [I said,] ‘This is the real shit you’re talking about. I don’t care about London and the accent. You gotta really come with it.’ He said, ‘I think I’ll be okay.’ . . . So I take him to my live night, 800 people there. People are playing, black folks sweating and just getting it . . . they would tear American Idol up. All of a sudden, Ed Sheeran gets up with a ukulele, walks out onto the stage, and the brother next to me says, ‘Yo, Foxx, who the fuck is this dude right here, with the red hair and shit and the fucking ukulele?’ I said, ‘Man, his name is Ed Sheeran. Let’s see what he does.’ Within 12 minutes, he got a standing ovation.”

  Before You Search Far and Wide . . .

  Jamie played Ray Charles in the film Ray, for which he won an Academy Award. Before filming, the two of them played piano together:

  “As we’re playing, I’m on cloud nine. Then he moves into some intricate stuff, like Thelonious Monk. I was like, ‘Oh shit, I gotta catch up’ and I hit a wrong note. He stopped because his ears are very sensitive: ‘Now, why the hell would you do that? Why you hit the note like that? That’s the wrong note, man. Shit.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Charles,’ and he said, ‘Let me tell you something, brother. The notes are right underneath your fingers, baby. You just gotta take the time out to play the right notes. That’s life.”

  Spirit animal: African lion

  * * *

  Bryan Johnson

  Bryan Johnson (TW: @bryan_johnson, bryanjohnson.co) is an entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder of OS Fund and Braintree, the latter of which was bought by eBay in 2013 for $800 million in cash. Bryan launched OS Fund in 2014 with $100 million of his personal capital to support inventors and scientists who aim to benefit humanity by rewriting the operating systems of life. In other words: He fuels real-world mad scientists tackling things like asteroid mining, artificial intelligence, life extension, and more. He is currently the founder and CEO of Kernel, which is developing the world’s first neuroprosthesis [brain-implantable computer] to mimic, repair, and improve cognition.

  Behind the Scenes

  To inspire his kids, Bryan commissioned a graffiti artist to paint Gandalf the Grey and Harry Potter on one of his walls at home. They are pointing their wands skyward and above it all is the word “dream.” He wants to teach them that, just as Tolkien and Rowling authored worlds using text, entrepreneurs have the ability to author their lives with companies.

  On our regular hikes in San Francisco, Bryan has asked me variations of this question several times: “What can you do that will be remembered in 200 to 400 years?”

  One of His First Entrepreneurial Gigs

  On selling credit card processing door-to-door to retailers:

  “I would say, ‘Tim, if you give me 3 minutes of your time, I will give you $100 if you do not say “yes” to using my service.’ Usually they would say something like, ‘That is interesting . . .’ and I would open my pitch book and walk them through the industry. Here are the providers, here is what they do, here is how they do it, here is what I do. I am the same as everyone else, except with me, you get honesty and transparency and great customer support. So, I became this company’s number-one sales person. I broke all their sales records following this really simple formula of just selling honesty and transparency in a broken industry.”

  Is It an Itch or a Burn?

  “I have a lot of conversations with people who want to start their own thing, and one of my favorite questions to ask is, ‘Is this an itch, or is it burning?’ If it is just an itch, it is not sufficient. It gets to this point of how badly you really want it. For me, I burned the boats. There was no way I was going to get a job. Failure was never an option. I had to make this work.”

  You Should Probably Not Do That Again

  “One time [as a kid], I wondered—if you filled a milk gallon jug full of gasoline and you lit it on fire, what would happen? So, I took the gasoline that was otherwise used for the lawnmower, and I filled up this carton, and I went out on the street and I lit it on fire. . . . As expected, it produced quite a flame. [My mom’s] green Taurus rolled around the corner, coming down the street and I thought, ‘Oh, no . . .’ So, in haste, I kicked over the jug and the gasoline spills onto the street and into the gutter. Now it is rolling down the gutter and there are cars [down the street]. I am imagining cars blowing up. So, I walk over to the gutter and I stomp on the gasoline to put it out, and, of course, that splashes. Now, the lawn is on fire. It is getting worse and worse. Anyway, we put the fire out and then the only thing she says to me is, ‘Bryan, you probably should not do that again,’ and I said, ‘All right, that is fair.’ That is typical of my mom.”

  Parenting Advice—“How Did You Think About It?”

  “So, we got on a four-wheeler 2 weeks ago—my 11- and 9-year-old and I—and I said, ‘Okay, I am going to put your helmets on, I am going to give you a 2-minute lesson on how to go forward and how to go backwards, how to brake. I
am going to give you some lessons—do not go into a ditch, do not go on a hillside that will turn you over, etc.—but I am expecting you now to go out for 5 minutes and come back safely, and tell me how you did it. What were your thought processes? How did you stay safe? What were the risks you took? But I want you to do it, and I am not going with you.’ . . . They came back in one piece, and it was a good experience for them to tell me ‘Okay, Dad, this is how we looked at the risk, this is how we thought we might potentially get into a problem. . . .’ They [even ran into a tree] going slowly . . . but they talked about it, which I thought was really helpful.”

  The Shackleton Sniff Test

  Ernest Shackleton had a huge impact on Bryan as a child. “He is remembered [for] the grit and how they actually overcame all the obstacles that came about during the expedition. He is hugely inspirational in my life, because I apply what I call the ‘Shackleton sniff test’ to everything I do. . . . I contemplate: If I go about on this endeavor, does it meet the threshold that Shackleton applied? Is this the most audacious endeavor I can possibly conceive of? What would Shackleton do?”

  TF: Joe De Sena (page 38) goes through the same exercise using Shackleton as the litmus test. “That’s his dude, too,” as a mutual friend put it.

  ✸ What is something you believe that other people think is crazy?

  “Our existence is programmable.”

  ✸ Do you have any quotes you live your life by or think of often?

  “Life is not waiting for the storm to pass, it’s learning how to dance in the rain” [adapted from Vivian Greene].

  Five-Monkey Games

  This relates to learned helplessness, which is often outdated and reinforced by others who mean well:

  “At Braintree, one of the principles I consistently communicated was, ‘Challenge all assumptions.’ The story that I accompanied that with was: There are five monkeys in a room, and there is a basket of bananas at the top of a ladder. The monkeys, of course, want to climb the ladder to get the bananas, but every time one tries, they are all sprayed with cold water. After a few times of being sprayed by cold water, the monkeys learn to not climb up the ladder to get the bananas. . . . [The experimenters then] take one monkey out and put a new monkey in, and the new monkey sees a banana. He thinks, ‘Hey, I am going to grab a banana,’ but when he tries to go up the ladder, the other monkeys grab him and pull him back. . . . [The experimenters eventually] systematically pull every monkey out, and now you have five new monkeys. Any time a new monkey comes in and tries to climb the ladder, they grab the monkey and pull it back, but none of the five have ever been sprayed by cold water.”

  TF: This brought to mind a story from Tara Brach (page 555) that I think of often:

  This is a story about a tiger named Mohini that was in captivity in a zoo, who was rescued from an animal sanctuary. Mohini had been confined to a 10-by-10-foot cage with a concrete floor for 5 or 10 years. They finally released her into this big pasture: With excitement and anticipation, they released Mohini into her new and expensive environment, but it was too late. The tiger immediately sought refuge in a corner of the compound, where she lived for the remainder of her life. She paced and paced in that corner until an area 10-by-10 feet was worn bare of grass. . . . Perhaps the biggest tragedy in our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns.

  What past limitations—real or perceived—are you carrying as baggage? Where in your life are you pacing in a 10-by-10-foot patch of grass? Where are you afraid of getting sprayed with water, even though it’s never happened? Oftentimes, everything you want is a mere inch outside of your comfort zone. Test it.

  Spirit animal: Penn Jillette (a close friend)

  * * *

  Brian Koppelman

  Brian Koppelman (TW: @briankoppelman, briankoppelman.com) is a screenwriter, novelist, director, and producer. Prior to his hit show Billions, which he co-created and executive produced (and co-wrote on spec), he was best known as the co-writer of Rounders and Ocean’s Thirteen, as well as a producer of The Illusionist and The Lucky Ones. He has directed films such as Solitary Man, starring Michael Douglas. Brian also hosts The Moment podcast. One of my favorite episodes is with John Hamburg, who wrote and directed I Love You, Man and wrote Meet the Parents, among many others. It’s like film school and an MFA in screenwriting wrapped into one conversation.

  You Don’t Find Time, You Make Time

  “I was 30 years old. I was unhappy with the life I was living when I went into this one poker club in New York City, heard the way that people spoke, saw the way they looked. I realized ‘Okay, that’s a movie [Rounders]. . . .’ I went to my wife, Amy, and my best friend, Dave, and made a plan to be able to continue to work but to write this script in the mornings. Amy cleared out a storage space under our apartment. Dave and I at the time had no contacts in the movie business. We met for 2 hours every single morning. I think we took Sundays off, but other than that we didn’t miss a morning. We worked for 2 hours. He was bartending, and I was going to my job [Brian had just finished law school by taking night classes and was in the record business].

  “That 2 hours in the morning . . . there’s a slop sink in this little storage area. Room for one chair. I’d sit on the floor, Dave would sit at the typewriter most of the time. We had a stack of books that were reading material about poker and the language of the game. We’d sit in that room and write, and then at night, we’d go to these poker clubs and try to collect data. Lines that people said, stories that they told us, character traits . . . with no thought [of whether it] was realistic or unrealistic. We didn’t calculate any of it, except ‘How can we write a screenplay that we believe could be the basis for a movie that would be like Diner was for us?’ A movie that people—at the time, I was probably thinking about guys in their 20s—would want to quote to each other. It would be the thing that was their little secret, private movie, and that if we could do that, we’d succeeded.”

  TF: Khaled Hosseini wrote The Kite Runner in the early mornings before working as a full-time doctor. Paul Levesque (page 128) often works out at midnight. If it’s truly important, schedule it. As Paul might ask you, “Is that a dream or a goal?” If it isn’t on the calendar, it isn’t real.

  On Morning Pages, Which Brian Introduced Me To

  “[Every morning,] what I do is based on the Morning Pages by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. It’s three longhand pages where you just keep the pen moving for three pages, no matter what. No censoring, no rereading. It’s the closest thing to magic I’ve come across. If you really do it every day in a real disciplined practice, something happens to your subconscious that allows you to get to your most creative place. I’d say—and I know you’ve had this experience with other things you’ve given people—I’ve given that book to 100 people and said, ‘I’m telling you, you need to do this. . . .’ Of the 100 people I’ve given it to, maybe ten of them have actually opened the book and done the exercises. Of those ten, seven have had books, movies, TV shows, and made out successful. It’s incredible. That book changed my life, even though it’s very spiritual and I’m an atheist.”

  ✸ Book and podcast recommendations?

  The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

  What Makes Sammy Run by Budd Schulberg, about how someone makes their way in Hollywood.

  The Scriptnotes podcast by Craig Mazin and John August. “Between them, [they] have 20 hit movie credits. Those two guys know what they’re talking about. They’re in the trenches making movies every day.”

  Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide

  In this chapter, I’m going to talk about suicide, and why I’m still on this planet. It might seem dark, but the objective is to give hope and tools to those who need them. It’s a much larger number than you might imagine.

  I kept the following stories secret from my family, girlfriends, and closest friends for years. Recently, however, I had an experience that shook me—woke me up�
�and I decided that it was time to share everything.

  So, despite the shame I might feel, the fear that is making my palms sweat as I type this, allow me to get started.

  Here we go . . .

  A TWIST OF FATE

  * * *

  “Could you please sign this for my brother? It would mean a lot to him.”

  There were perhaps a dozen people around me asking questions, and one fan had politely waited his turn. The ask: A simple signature.

  It was Friday night, around 7 p.m., and I’d just finished a live recording of the TWiST podcast. There was electricity in the air. Jason Calacanis, the host and interviewer, knows how to put on a show. He’d hyped up the crowd and kept things rolling for more than 2 hours on stage, asking me every imaginable question. The venue had been packed to capacity. Now, more than 200 people were milling about, drinking wine or heading off for their weekends.

  A handful of attendees had gathered near the mics to chat with me.

  “Anything in particular you’d like me to say to him? To your brother?” I asked this one gent, who was immaculately dressed in a suit. His name was Silas.

  He froze for a few seconds. I saw his eyes flutter. There was something unusual that I couldn’t put a finger on.

  I decided to take the pressure off: “I’m sure I can come up with something. Are you cool with that?” Silas nodded.

  I wrote a few lines, added a smiley face, signed the book he’d brought, and handed it back. He thanked me and backed out of the crowd. I waved and returned to chatting with the others.