Timothy Ferriss's Blog, page 99

One tiny favor for 2014! If you’re enjoying the podcast, could you please take 30 seconds now to leave a brief review on iTunes? Just click “View in iTunes” under my pic here. If I pass 2,000 reviews before Jan 1 (a goal of mine for 2014!), I will reciprocate by writing a massive, behind-the-scenes post on everything I’ve learned about podcasting. I promise tricks of the trade galore, just as in-depth as the “Hacking Kickstarter” post. Speaking of which…

Ed Cooke is a dear friend and a Grandmaster of Memory.  In 2010, he was interviewed by a journalist named Joshua Foer. Under Ed’s Yoda-like training, Joshua became the very next American Memory Champion in 2011.  It took less than a year for Ed to transform a novice from unknown to world-class.

But how?!?

Aha… This interview explores Ed Cooke’s brilliant techniques (many of which I use), strategies, and practical philosophies.  To boot, he’s also a wicked funny bastard!  If you enjoyed the epic interviews with Kevin Kelly, Josh Waitzkin, or Maria Popova, you’ll love Ed.  He’s one of a kind.

Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream it by clicking for Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Download both as MP3s by right-clicking and choosing “save as”: Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What’s one mental feat you’d love to accomplish in 2015? Any tips or tricks you can share? Please share in the comments by clicking here.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Enjoy!

And also… please subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes!  A kitten gets super powers every time you do this.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Selected Links from the Episode

Ed Cooke on Twitter (@tedcooke). Say hello!
Learn more about Memrise
Learn more about the World Memory Championships
Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
Theory of Colours by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Read Tim’s thoughts on delayed philanthropy (and the reasons against it) – The Karmic Capitalist
Spectacle by David Rockwell & Bruce Mau
Station to Station by Doug Aitken
In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell
Armando Iannucci and The Armando Iannucci Show
Withnail and I
Learn more about Sensory Substitution and Paul Bach-y-Rita
Touching the Rock by John Hull
The Blind Man Who Taught Himself to See by Michael Finkel
The Joyous Cosmology by Alan Watts
Is Trilled Smell Possible?

Show Notes

Part 1

How Tim and Ed were introduced, and what it takes to be a “grandmaster of memory” [5:02]
The dynamic that produces rapid developments in speed and capability [8:15]
The outcome of the unusual 4-Hour Chef memory competition [13:02]
The story of winning the US memory championships and subsequently training Joshua Foer [21:02]
Exploring the extraordinary skill of imagination [24:22]
Memory techniques which can be utilized in everyday life [32:02]
Recommendations for designing house parties based on memory techniques [39:02]
Clarifying and finding objectivity…and the value thereof [41:47]
Rapid-fire questions [47:45]

Part 2

Balancing intuition and analytical decision making [1:27]
How to set up incentives to flog yourself into self-discipline and systems thinking [5:55]
On merit and virtue [8:05]
Contrasting homelessness with the strange selfishness of Silicon Valley [10:00]
The conundrum of the Bill Gates model of philanthropy [18:25]
What is financial security, and how does Ed Cooke define it? [24:20]
Ed Cooke’s take on Burning Man [30:55]
Quick fire theory about why Burning Man is the most brilliant institution in the world [32:20]
How to extract the Burning Man experience for a group of 20? [41:40]
Escaping existential doldrums [45:55]
Balancing present-state mindfulness with building things [52:25]
More rapid-fire questions [55:40]
A specific defining moment from Ed Cooke’s childhood and the theory of exteroception [1:07:25]

People Mentioned

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Monty Python
Armando Iannucci
Alan Partridge
Withnail and I
Kevin O’Regan
Paul Bach-y-Rita
Seymour Papert
Daniel Kish
Alan Watts

I’m looking for the perfect Managing Editor.

This person will be my right hand for all things related to content. Some of things you’d get to work with:

- One of the world’s most popular blogs (this one). Typically 1.5-2 million readers per month. See “The Tim Ferriss Effect” on Forbes for a funny description of what it can do.

- One of the world’s most popular podcasts — The Tim Ferriss Show — selected by iTunes as “Best of 2014″ and often the #1 business podcast across all of iTunes (at times, #1 across all categories).

- Email broadcasts to nearly 500,000 people.

- Social media accounts that reach millions of people.

- New top-secret projects for 2015, including high-end video and new book stuff.

Things would start with a paid one-month trial, probably around 20 hours per week. If things go gangbusters, there would be potential to expand significantly from there. Competitive pay and tons of interesting options.

Here’s more on me, if needed.

JOB DESCRIPTION

To help me focus exclusively on writing, interviewing, and other content creation, I need someone who’s expert at handling quite a bit.

The Managing Editor’s responsibilities would include, but not be limited to, the following:

* Spearheading the editorial calendar for the blog, podcast, email, etc. for the next 6-12 months. I’m too ad hoc and last-minute right now. It’s unnecessarily stressful. I need someone to manage most or all of it, including…

* Helping me reach out to would-be podcast guests and book them, prep them, confirm them, etc., whether celebrities, world-class investors, or scientists.

* Helping me draft blog posts that I don’t otherwise have the bandwidth to adapt. For instance, great unused parts of The 4-Hour Body that are currently Word docs with footnotes, etc. A past example of such adaptation: The Truth About “Homeopathic” Medicine.

* Sourcing great guest posts and guest authors. Here are two different but equally successful examples: Hacking Kickstarter and 20 Things I’ve Learned From Traveling Around the World for Three Years.

* Helping plan and implement content promotion. This would include social accounts reaching millions of people, cutting-edge experimental stuff, and more.

* Experiment with different ways of increasing traffic (syndication, managing SEO/SEM contractors, etc.).

PERKS

* You’d be working behind the curtains on high-profile projects. You’ll see all of my projects first, and get to play a critical role in their creation and launch. This could range from interviewing icons to wordsmithing posts or book chapters that will be seen by millions of people.

* I will ask your advice and look to you for original ideas, new experiments, and more.

* If you’re in SF (or willing to visit), you will also be invited to spend time with the most impressive people in my network. In fact, that would be part of your job.

* I might send you great tequila, there will be strange assignments, and you get to work with a weirdo. That’s me. There won’t be a lot of boredom.

JOB REQUIREMENTS

Please note that most of the below are “must have,” not “nice to have.”

First and foremost, you need to understand and love the goal of my content — helping people unlock their latent potential, and providing non-obvious toolkits to that end.

These types of stories must make you excited to conquer the world, do huge things, and tackle big problems. Alignment with the above mission is the most important, but you should also:

1) Have at least 2-4 years of writing/editorial experience

2) Be a great writer and equally good at editing/improving other people’s writing.

3) Have managed tight deadlines and successfully put together editorial calendars.

4) Ideal: Have managed other writers.

5) Ideal: Comfortable with WordPress.

6) Ideal but not required: Live in or near SF.  Remote is also possible.

I need someone with relevant experience. This is non-negotiable. I cannot take fresh grads or people who don’t check most of the above boxes. I’m hiring a pro, not looking to mentor someone from ground zero.

DOWNSIDES

A friend and well-known editor for a massive site cautioned me about this section. In his words:

“[It’s] great to tell people about these, but maybe be a little less brutal with your self-descriptions? These are reasonable expectations in my trade.”

Alas, I still prefer the Shackleton approach to job descriptions. Being my Managing Editor will not be easy. Rewarding? Definitely. Exciting at many times? Absolutely. Easy? Not likely. Think of it like a professional sports team.  I’m not going to haze you or anything stupid, but my content works because I take it very, very seriously. We’re here to create posts that are more valuable (traffic-wise) two years after publication than the week we put them out. We want epic content that gets linked to by “real” media all over the world. If you have the right personality for it, you’ll love this. But…

Here are some fair expectations:

* I’m an unrelenting perfectionist. If you’re not the same, it will probably make you insane.

* I live and die by deadlines. They are absolutely sacred, and I am merciless about this.

* You will need to be self-directed and very self-organized. Besides inflexible deadlines, I won’t provide a lot of structure. I assume you’re bringing a lot of your own process and best practices.

* You need good mental and physical stamina, and you MUST have the discipline to “turn off” and recharge during off hours. You should have a regular exercise regimen or activities for decompressing.

STILL INTERESTED? NEXT STEPS…

Great!

Just to re-emphasize: I absolutely need someone with experience. If you have no experience, there will be other opportunities with me in 2015. Please don’t clog things up here.

If you do check most boxes, I’d LOVE to hear from you.  2015 is going to be a LOT of fun.

Please click here to tell me about yourself.  Any questions?  Please let me know in the comments, which I’ll be watching.

Thank you for reading this far, and Happy New Year, all!

Pura vida,

Tim

(Photo: Aaron Benitez)

“Luxury is feeling unrushed. It is designing a life that allows you to do what you want with high leverage, with many options, all while feeling unrushed.”

-Tim Ferriss [30:36]

The short audio below answers your 20+ most popular questions, as determined by 7,000+ votes.  For those who missed it, I’ve included a bonus part 3 on how to avoid decision fatigue.

This was a fun opportunity to answer great questions, including:

1. “If you were to write The 4-Hour Workweek 2.0 for 2015, what would you change or update from the original version? Are there new tools, technology, business models, or ideas that would make it more adaptable to today’s realities?” – Matt Coughlin, Costa Rica [2:56]

2. “What is a main communication technique that you use to network with people of higher status, especially before you reached mainstream success?” - Andrei, Canada [6:26]

3. “Regardless of industry, what is a trend you see developing that you think most people are missing?” – Malcolm, DC [12:56]

4. “What is the one thing that you have absolutely have to do everyday no matter what your schedule is?” – Vik Dulat, Toronto, Canada [16:01]

…and about 15 more questions.

Listen to them on iTunes.
Stream now by clicking on Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3.
Download as MP3s – right-click and choose “save as”: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

This episode is brought to you by Onnit. I own Onnit supplements (like chewable melatonin for jetlag and flights), maces, battle ropes (not “battle robes,” as I first heard it), kettlebells, and enough gear to ensure a lifetime of self-inflicted torture and higher performance.

This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What would you like to see in an updated 4-Hour Workweek? OR Do you have any morning routines that make a huge difference in your day? Please share (or read others’ ideas) in the comments!

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Enjoy!

Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review here. It keeps me going…

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Select Links from Parts 1 and 2

Do you have a 4-Hour Workweek success story? If so, please share it with me by clicking here!
Rishi turmeric and ginger tea
Foxcatcher
Unbounce
Optimizely or Visual Website Optimizer
VHX.tv
The Pomodoro Technique
Morning Rituals and Daily Routines
The 5-Minute Journal
The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz
Guided Meditation with Tara Brock as recommended by Maria Popova
Concept 2 Rower
How I Learned Yabusame – Japanese horseback archery

People Mentioned

Jack Canfield
Ed Byrd
Trip Hawkins
Naomi Shihab Nye

 

“How do you balance the desire to live longer with the desire to perform well?” (Tweet It)

– Peter Attia, MD

This episode delves into all types of performance enhancement and tracking — optimizing blood testing, drinking “jet fuel,” training for ultra-endurance sports, consuming synthetic ketones, using metabolic chambers, extending longevity by avoiding certain types of exercise, and much more.

Peter Attia is the co-founder and current president of the Nutritional Science Initiatives (NuSI).

He is an ultra-endurance athlete, compulsive self-experimenter, and one of the most fascinating human beings I know. Peter also earned his M.D. from Stanford University and holds a B.Sc. in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He resided at John Hopkins Hospital as a general surgeon, then conducted research at the National Cancer Institute under Dr. Steve Rosenberg, where Peter focused on the role of regulatory T cells in cancer regression and other immune-based therapies for cancer.

PLEASE:  Join Peter and I (I’m matching up to $50,000) in supporting this high-leverage project, ideally before the end of December.

Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream by clicking here.
Download as MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as.”

This episode is brought to you by Onnit. Joe Rogan introduced me to Onnit, and since then, my garage has resembled a showroom. I own Onnit supplements (like chewable melatonin for jetlag and flights), maces, battle ropes (not “battle robes,” as I first heard it), kettlebells, and enough gear to ensure a lifetime of self-inflicted torture and higher performance.

This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY:  What counter-intuitive physical “hacks” or dietary approaches have been most impactful in your life? Please let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Enjoy!

Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review here. It keeps me going…

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Selected Links from the Episode

Learn more about NuSI – The Manhattan Project of Nutrition
Learn more about the Laura and John Arnold Foundation
Connect with Peter Attia on Twitter
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman
10% Happier by Dan Harris
Eating Academy – Peter Attia’s Blog
Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes

Show Notes

Peter Attia’s obsessions on performance [11:35]
Is hemoglobin A1C a running 3-month average of your aggregate glucose level? [16:50]
Managing metabolic syndrome [17:15]
What are synthetic ketones and why might people care? [19:45]
Peter Attia’s first experience consuming synthetic ketones [24:55]
Potential benefits or advantages of consuming synthetic ketones [28:55]
Exploring the difference between ketoacidosis and ketosis [31:10]
A mnemonic for the difference between exogenous and endogenous [34:40]
Interesting results derived from tests with metabolic chambers  [35:15]
Thinking about the health complications related to blood bio-markers [41:45]
The bio-effects of swimming from Catalina Island to Los Angeles (10 hours later) [51:05]
Questioning fecal matter transplants [53:45]
Challenges regarding daily cycles of testosterone and how this effects testing [46:35]
The sloppy thinking around life extension [58:45]
Perspectives of death avoidance, IGF-1 and growth hormone use [01:03:00]
Heart-rate optimization for longevity [1:14:15]
Exercise recommendations for extending life [1:21:15]
Addressing challenges with cancer, cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease and neurodegenerative disease [1:44:45]
Rapid Fire Questions: Meditation, the most enjoyable $100 spent in recent memory, the successful and the punchable [1:31:30]

Information Mentioned

Joe Rogan
John D. Arnold
Krebs Cycle
ATP
Richard Veech
Richard Feynman
Dan Loeb
John Griffin
Dennis Calibrese
Katharine McCormick

To kick things off, what is foie gras?

It can be explained with a short missive from our friend Wikipedia:

The California foie gras law, California S.B. 1520, is a California State statute that prohibits the “force feed[ing of] a bird for the purpose of enlarging the bird’s liver beyond normal size”…

Former Senator John Burton called foie gras production “an inhumane process that other countries have sensibly banned.”

Given this outrage related to mistreating birds, you might be surprised to learn that human foie gras industries are booming.  Children’s livers are apparently particularly tasty. Not unlike veal, I suppose.

I’m putting $50K of my own money into related investments, but we’ll get back to that in a minute. First, some background…

For most of the 20th century, fatty liver and liver cirrhosis had two primary causes: drinking too much alcohol (e.g. Mickey Mantle) or hepatitis B or C (via IV drug use, unhygienic tattooing, tainted blood transfusions, etc.).

But in the last few decades, even infants are showing up with livers that should belong to hardcore alcoholics.  And the numbers aren’t small.

It’s estimated that one in ten American children now suffer from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), alongside 40 million affected adults. If you’re an obese Mexican-American boy, the odds are 50-50 (!) that you have NAFLD, thanks to genetic predisposition (PNPLA3 gene).

15 years ago, this disease was unheard of.  In 10 years, it’s projected to be the #1 cause of liver transplants. Put another way — In 2001, NAFLD was the reason for 1 out of every 100 liver transplants; by 2010, it was up a ten-fold to 1 in 10; by 2025, assuming nothing stems this tide, there could be five million Americans who need new livers because of it.

Who are driving this trend?

Some point fingers at good folks such as Coca-Cola, juice “cocktail” manufacturers, and the like.  Given that many researchers blame fructose, it’s not a huge stretch. Personally, the whole thing makes me sick.  I’d like to sic the best scientists in the country on them.

Ah, and this is where the good news comes in.

There is a way, albeit an indirect way, to do this. I implore you to read on and bear with me.  This is where it gets exciting.

The NIH alone has spent $155 billion on cancer research since 1972, and cancer survival is up a paltry 3% as a result. The US government spends over $25 billion EACH year on HIV/AIDS. That’s a lot of money.

One might assume fatty liver disease would require similar sums. After all, more American adults have NAFLD than prostate cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, or type 2 diabetes.

That’s the disconnect…and the opportunity to be part of history.

Enter the “Manhattan Project of Nutrition”

The Nutrition Science Initiative–NuSI–has been called the “Manhattan Project of nutrition.” They are run like a lean startup, and I’m proud to be a part of their advisory board.

They don’t take industry money, so they have no interests to protect.

They believe the NAFLD epidemic can be curtailed for a total of $50 million, but the whole domino effect starts with just $1 million.  It is a rare day in science when fundamental questions about an epidemic can be answered with such little money (respectively). It’s an incredible Archimedes lever.

For context, NuSI argues that there are dietary triggers of diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and fatty liver disease. To determine what the triggers are, NuSI assembles teams of the best scientists in the country (e.g., from Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, NIH, UCSF, UCSD, Emory, etc.) to fund and execute the kind of research nobody else is willing (or able) to perform.

For NAFLD, NuSI’s team of experts have designed three trials to determine the respective roles of too many calories, too many carbohydrates, and too much sugar–the leading three hypotheses–as dietary triggers.

In early 2015, this team will begin the first ever controlled clinical trial to see if removing sugars from the diet can reverse fatty liver disease in children.

40 kids with NAFLD will be split into two groups, with 20 simply observed on their normal diet as controls, and 20 provided with a diet that’s identical to what they usually eat, but completely devoid of added or refined sugars. The scientists’ hypothesis is that the sugar-free diet will at least stop the progression of NAFLD in these kids, and may even reduce the amount of fat in their livers.

If that’s the case, it’ll be the best evidence we have linking sugar to fatty liver disease.

My $50,000 Challenge…And How to Get Involved

I’m personally matching up to $50,000 for whatever is raised through this blog post, and every donation–big or small–makes a major difference.

NuSI is looking to raise $1 million dollars for the first of these three trials—the one that determines how the rest get done.  The snowball that starts the avalanche. There are few chances in the world to have this type of impact for this type of money.  Could it end up forcing labeling changes, product modifications, obligatory package warnings, policy shifts, and more?  I believe so.

Supporting this campaign very easy, and remember–I’m excited to be putting my own skin in this game.  I sincerely hope you join me.  Every bit counts.

There are three options:

1. Donate by credit or debit card. Visit: http://nusi.org/donate. Enter your donation amount, indicate “NAFLD — Tim Ferriss” in the message field, and click “Donate.”  Done.

2. Donate by check. Send your check to: NuSI, attention: Lacey Stenson, 6020 Cornerstone Court W. Suite 240, San Diego, CA 92121. Be sure to write “NAFLD – Tim Ferriss” in the memo line.

3. Donate by transferring securities (stocks, etc.). Email [email protected] [remember the double “r” and double “s”] and they’ll do as much heavy lifting as possible.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for supporting if you’re able.  This is a good fight.

If you’d also like to hear a fascinating chat with Peter Attia, MD, co-founder of NuSI, I interview him here on radical sports experimentation, synthetic ketones, meditation, and more. He’s a competitive ultra-endurance athlete, MD, surgeon, and obsessive self-tracker, so we get along great :)

###

Relevant reading and citations:

Browning JD et al. Prevalence of hepatic steatosis in an urban population in the United States: Impact of ethnicity. Hepatology, 2004.

Welsh JA, Karpen S, Vos MB. Increasing prevalence of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease among United States adolescents, 1988-1994 to 2007-2010. Journal of Pediatrics, 2013.

Targher G, Day CP, Bonora E. Risk of cardiovascular disease in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. The New England Journal of Medicine, 2010.

Dudekula A et al. Weight loss in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease patients in an ambulatory care setting is largely unsuccessful but correlates with frequency of clinic visits. PLoS One, 2014.

Kawasaki T et al. Rats fed fructose-enriched diets have characteristics of nonalcoholic hepatic steatosis. The Journal of Nutrition, 2009.

Sanchez-Lozada LG et al. Comparison of free fructose and glucose to sucrose in the ability to cause fatty liver. European Journal of Nutrition, 2010.

Best CH et al. Liver damage produced by feeding alcohol or sugar and its prevention by choline. British Medical Journal, 1949.

Ouyang X et al. Fructose consumption as a risk factor for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Journal of Hepatology, 2008.

Abid A et al. Soft drink consumption is associated with fatty liver disease independent of metabolic syndrome. Journal of Hepatology, 2009.

Abdelmalek MF et al. Increased fructose consumption is associated with fibrosis severity in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Hepatology, 2010.

Assy N et al. Soft drink consumption linked with fatty liver in the absence of traditional risk factors. Canadian Journal of Gastroenterology, 2008.

Stanhope KL et al. Consuming fructose-sweetened, not glucose-sweetened, beverages increases visceral adiposity and lipids and decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight/obese humans. The Journal of Clinical Investigation, 2009.

Maersk M et al. Sucrose-sweetened beverages increase fat storage in liver, muscle, and visceral fat depot: a 6-mo randomized intervention study. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2012.

Browning JD et al. Short-term weight loss and hepatic triglyceride reduction: Evidence of a metabolic advantage with dietary carbohydrate restriction. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2011.

Vos MB, Lavine JE. Dietary fructose in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Hepatology, 2013.

Chung M et al. Fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, sucrose, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease or indexes of liver health: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2014.

If I could study non-fiction writing with anyone, it would be John McPhee.

He is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and he won that award in 1999 for Annals of the Former World.  Even more impressive to me, he can turn any subject — truly, any subject — into a page turner.

An entire book about oranges? Check. Bark canoes? Done.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve raved about his books like a sweaty-palmed fan boy.  Personal favorites include the bite-sized Levels of the Game (about one epic tennis match), Coming into the Country (about the Alaskan wilderness), and his amazing collections of short stories (don’t miss Brigade de Cuisine in this one).

Now, a confession.  I did have the chance to study with McPhee as an undergrad at Princeton.  I still have all of the class notes.  I consider it one of the biggest strokes of luck in my life.  And… simply mentioning it makes me nervous as hell that I’m going to leave a typo in this post.  Besmirching the fine legacy of Professor McPhee!

Translated into my native Long Island-ese:  If I fuck up anything in this post, it’s all my fault, and I didn’t listen to Professor McPhee well enough. He tried his best.

Now, moving past my preamble…

The below piece on McPhee is written by Joel Achenbach, a fellow graduate of McPhee’s class. Joel is now a staff writer for The Washington Post and the author of six books.

The profile recently appeared in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, and I absolutely had to share it with you. It’s the incredible story of a master writer, master teacher, and fascinating human being I aspire to emulate.  There’s so much to learn from McPhee, and the below is a laugh-out-loud sampling.

I’ve left in the graduation years to preserve the context.

Enjoy!

###

John McPhee ’53 has many moves as a writer, one of which he calls a “gossip ladder” — nothing more than a stack of quotations, each its own paragraph, unencumbered by attribution or context. You are eavesdropping in a crowd. You take these scraps of conversation and put them in a pile. Like this:

“A piece of writing needs to start somewhere, go somewhere, and sit down when it gets there.”

“Taking things from one source is plagiarism; taking things from several sources is research.”

“A thousand details add up to one impression.”

“You cannot interview the dead.” 

“Readers are not supposed to see structure. It should be as invisible as living bones. It shouldn’t be imposed; structure arises within the story.”

“Don’t start off with the most intense, scary part, or it will all be anticlimactic from there.”

“You can get away with things in fact that would be tacky in fiction — and stuck on TV at 3 o’clock in the morning. Sometimes the scene is carried by the binding force of fact.”

The speaker in every instance is John McPhee. I assembled this particular ladder from the class notes of Amanda Wood Kingsley ’84, an illustrator and writer who, like me, took McPhee’s nonfiction writing class, “The Literature of Fact,” in the spring of 1982. In February, McPhee will mark 40 years as a Princeton professor, which he has pulled off in the midst of an extraordinarily productive career as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of more than two dozen books.

When the editor of this magazine asked me to write something about McPhee’s class, I knew it would be the easiest assignment ever, though a little nerve-wracking. It was, because most of McPhee’s former students have saved their class notes and marked-up papers (Marc Fisher ’80: “I’ve never lived anywhere without knowing where my notes from his class are”).

When I meet Rick Klein ’98 at a coffee shop down the block, we examine forensically Rick’s class papers and the McPhee marginalia, the admonitions and praise from a teacher who keeps his pencils sharp. McPhee never overlooked a typo, and when Rick (now the hotshot political director at ABC News) wrote “fowl” instead of “foul,” the professor’s pencil produced a devastating noose.

McPhee’s greatest passion was for structure, and he required that students explain, in a few sentences at the end of every assignment, how they structured the piece. (McPhee noted on a piece Rick wrote about his father: “This is a perfect structure — simple, like a small office building, as you suggest. The relationship of time to paragraphing is an example of what building a piece of writing is all about.”)

Rick reminds me that the class was pass/fail.

“You were competing not for a grade, but for his approval. You were so scared to turn in a piece of writing that John McPhee would realize was dirt. We were just trying to impress a legend,” he says.

Which is the nerve-wracking part, still. He is likely to read this article and will notice the infelicities, the stray words, the unnecessary punctuation, the galumphing syntax, the desperate metaphors, and the sentences that wander into the woods. “They’re paying you by the comma?” McPhee might write in the margin after reading the foregoing sentence. My own student work tended toward the self-conscious, the cute, and the undisciplined, and McPhee sometimes would simply write: “Sober up.”

He favors simplicity in general, and believes a metaphor needs room to breathe. “Don’t slather one verbal flourish on top of another lest you smother them all,” he’d tell his students. On one of Amanda’s papers, he numbered the images, metaphors, and similes from 1 to 11, and then declared, “They all work well, to a greater or lesser degree. In 1,300 words, however, there may be too many of them — as in a fruitcake that is mostly fruit.”

When Amanda produced a verbose, mushy description of the “Oval with Points” sculpture on campus, McPhee drew brackets around one passage and wrote, “Pea soup.”

That one was a famously difficult assignment: You had to describe a piece of abstract art on campus. It was an invitation to overwriting. As McPhee put it, “Most writers do a wild skid, leave the road, and plunge into the dirty river.” Novice writers believe they will improve a piece of writing by adding things to it; mature writers know they will improve it by taking things out.

Another standard McPhee assignment came on Day One of the class: Pair up and interview each other, then write a profile. It was both an early test of our nonfiction writing skills and a clever way for McPhee to get to know his students at the beginning of the semester.

McPhee’s dedication to his students was, and is, remarkable, given the other demands on his time. One never got the sense that he wished he could be off writing a magazine story for The New Yorker rather than annotating, and discussing face-to-face, a clumsy, ill-conceived, syntactically mangled piece of writing by a 20-year-old.

He met with each of his 16 students for half an hour every other week. Many of his students became professional writers, and he lined up their books on his office shelf, but McPhee never has suggested that the point of writing is to make money, or that the merit of your writing is determined by its market value. A great paragraph is a great paragraph wherever it resides, he’d say. It could be in your diary.

“I think he loves it when students run off and become field biologists in Africa or elementary school teachers,” Jenny Price ’85 tells me. She’s now a writer, artist, and visiting Princeton professor.

McPhee taught us to revere language, to care about every word, and to abjure the loose synonym. He told us that words have subtle and distinct meanings, textures, implications, intonations, flavors. (McPhee might say: “Nuances” alone could have done the trick there.) Use a dictionary, he implored. He proselytized on behalf of the gigantic, unabridged Webster’s Second Edition, a tank of a dictionary that not only would give a definition, but also would explore the possible synonyms and describe how each is slightly different in meaning. If you treat these words interchangeably, it’s like taping together adjacent keys on a piano, he said.

Robert Wright ’79, an acclaimed author and these days a frequent cycling companion of McPhee, tells me by email, “I’d be surprised if there have been many or even any Ferris professors who care about words as much as John — I don’t mean their proper use so much as their creative, deft use, sometimes in a way that exploits their multiple meanings; he also pays attention to the rhythm of words. All this explains why some of his prose reads kind of like poetry.”

Just to write a simple description clearly can take you days, he taught us (once again I’m citing Amanda’s class notes): “If you do it right, it’ll slide by unnoticed. If you blow it, it’s obvious.”

We had to learn to read. One of his assignments is called “greening.” You pretend you are in the composing room slinging hot type and need to remove a certain amount of the text block to get it to fit into an available space. You must search the text for words that can be removed surgically.

“It’s as if you were removing freight cars here and there in order to shorten a train — or pruning bits and pieces of a plant for aesthetic and pathological reasons, not to mention length,” McPhee commanded. “Do not do violence to the author’s tone, manner, style, nature, thumbprint.”

He made us green a couple of lines from the famously lean Gettysburg Address, an assignment bordering on sadism. A favorite paragraph designated for greening was the one in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness that begins, “Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine.” (McPhee, in assigning this, wrote: “Caution: You are approaching what may be my favorite paragraph in a lifetime of sporadic reading.”)

One time the young Bob Wright used the word “minced” in an assignment. In their bi-weekly office conference, McPhee challenged Bob to justify the word. Bob offered his reasoning. McPhee looked up “minced” in the hulking Webster’s. “You found the perfect word,” McPhee declared.

McPhee’s career coincided with the rise of “New Journalism,” but he never was really part of that movement and the liberties it took with the material. A college student often feels that rules are suffocating, that old-school verities need to be obliterated, and so some of us were tempted, naturally, to enhance our nonfiction — to add details from the imagination and produce a work of literature that’s better than “true” and existed on a more exalted plane of meaning. We’d make things up. McPhee wouldn’t stand for it.

Amanda remembers being called into his office one day: “I could tell something was wrong because he wasn’t his usual smiling self. He had me sit down and glared at me a moment. Then he asked me very sternly whether I had made up the character I had allegedly interviewed for my paper that week about animal traps and snares — I’d talked to an elderly African American friend of my grandparents, whose snare-building skills helped him survive the Depression. Once I convinced him that Oscar was a real person, McPhee sat quietly a moment, then smiled and said it was one of the best papers he had received. Those were some of the finest words I’ll ever hear.”

Perhaps there are writers out there who make it look easy, but that is not the example set by McPhee. He is of the school of thought that says a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than for other people. Some people joke about lashing themselves to the chair to get a piece of writing done, but McPhee actually has done it, with the belt of his bathrobe.

Here’s David Remnick ’81, the McPhee student who is now McPhee’s editor atThe New Yorker: “You were working with a practicing creative artist, a writer of ‘primary texts,’ as the scholars say, but one who was eloquent, detailed, unfancy, and clear in the way he talked about essential things: description, reporting, structure, sentences, punctuation, rhythm, to say nothing of the emotional aspects of writing — anxiety, lostness, frustration. He didn’t sugarcoat the difficulty of writing well. If anything, he highlighted the bitter-tasting terrors, he cherished them, rolled them around on his tongue. But behind all that was an immensely revealing, and rewarding, glimpse of the writing life. Not the glamour or the readings or the reviews. No, he allowed you to glimpse the process, what it meant to write alone in a room.”

Marc Fisher, my Washington Post colleague, points out that part of McPhee’s magic was getting students to slow down. “He catches adolescents at exactly the moment when we’ve been racing to get somewhere in life, and he corrals our ambition and raw skills and somehow persuades us that the wisdom, the power, and the mystery of telling people’s stories comes in good part from pressing down on the brakes, taking it all in, and putting it down on paper — yes, paper — in a way that is true to the people we meet and the lives they lead.”

I doubt many of us ever took a class that resonated so profoundly over the years. Part of it was that McPhee felt invested in our later success, regardless of our vocations. You could knock on his door years later and confer with him about your writing, your personal issues, your hopes and dreams. How many teachers are willing to be Professor For Life?

These are tough times in my business, which the people in suits now refer to as “content creation.” Revolutionary changes in how we consume information have created challenges for anyone who is committed to serious, time-consuming writing, the kind that involves revision and the search for that perfect word.

But I don’t think anyone can obliterate the beauty of a deftly constructed piece of writing. This is particularly the case if you’ve written it yourself. It’s like hitting a great golf shot; you forget the shanks and slices and remember the one exquisite 3-iron.

One day in McPhee’s class, he praised a sentence I’d written about the Louise Nevelson sculpture “Atmosphere and Environment X,” near Firestone Library. He had me read it aloud. The hook was set. I don’t always think about it consciously, but that’s pretty much what I’ve been trying to do for more than three decades — write another sentence that might win the approval of John McPhee.

- Joel Achenbach

###

Question of the Day:  What is your best writing tip or lesson learned?  Please share in the comments!

Interested in more on the craft of writing or art of creativity?  Here are a few resources:

In-depth interview with 7x New York Times bestselling author and Rolling Stone interviewer, Neil Strauss

The Odd (And Effective) Routines of Famous Minds like Beethoven, Maya Angelou, and Francis Bacon

Behind the Scenes: How to Make a Movie Trailer for Your Book (or Product)

“The fact of the matter is, back in 2008, terrorists were using search engines, like Google, to determine who shall live and who shall die. I know it’s a black swan event, but when you’re sharing on Facebook, it’s not just the media and marketing companies that you need to be concerned about. When you share openly, everybody has access to it.” (Tweet It)

– Marc Goodman

[Quick announcement: The Tim Ferriss Show is officially one of iTunes’ “Best of 2014“! Would you or your company like to sponsor the show? Click here for more details.]

Marc Goodman has been a Resident Futurist for the FBI and a senior adviser to Interpol.  He is also author of the much anticipated Future Crimes.

In this episode, we’ll go deep into the digital underground to expose the alarming ways criminals, corporations, and even countries are using emerging technologies against you…and some simple steps you can take to decrease your vulnerability.

To start, 3-D printers can produce AK-47s, bio-terrorists can download the recipe for Spanish flu, and cartels are using fleets of drones to ferry drugs across borders (all of which we touch on), but what else is waiting for you? What else is potentially targeting you right now?

If you want to hear about current and future threats, and simple defensive steps you can take, this interview is for you.

Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream by clicking here.
Download the MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save link as.”

This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results.

This episode is also brought to you by ExOfficio, which I’ve personally used since 2005 or so. They make ultra-lightweight, quick drying, antimicrobial clothing for men and women. Here’s my own ultra-light packing list (scroll down for video), which went viral.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: Have you ever been hacked or cyber-attacked? What practices are you using to mitigate the threat in the future? Please let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Enjoy!

Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review here. It keeps me going…

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Selected Links from the Episode

Future Crimes by Marc Goodman
Hartnackschule – Berlin-based German language school
“Hacker” Movies: War Games | Sneakers | The Net | Ghost Busters
Marc’s fave vintage crime novel – ONE POLICE PLAZA by William Caunitz
Watch Marc Goodman’s TED Talk
Gattaca – Movie related to the universal genetic testing
Hacking the President’s DNA by Andrew Hessel, Marc Goodman and Steven Kotler
Warfarin – anticoagulant
Neighborhood Emergency Response Training course
Reputation.com – Manage your online reputation
The Onion Router (TOR) – Anonymity for web browsing
Watch Ethan Nadelmann’s TED Talk
Watch IBM’s Watson beat the humans (Not the best video, but it tells the story)
Password protection and generation services: 1Password | LastPass
Pre-order a copy of the book at FutureCrimes.com
Learn more about Singularity University

Show Notes

Rapid fire questions [7:45]
Marc Goodman’s daily rituals [11:55]
Surprising examples of Internet-based crime [13:25]
Personalized biological weapons, genetic sequencing, etc. [16:25]
23andMe best practices: paranoia vs. preparedness [22:10]
Examining the urban myth (or not?) of personalized biological weapons [26:10]
Debunking the myth that terrorists and criminals are simply uneducated [28:10]
“Public safety is too important to leave to the professionals.” [35:55]
Do you think having iodine tablets and gas masks at home is overkill? [44:05]
Kidnapping in the modern world [45:40]
The story of Andy Grove and data infiltration in China [50:10]
Spear-phishing e-mails and how billions can be lost [52:50]
How to Armageddon-proof yourself [54:55]
The digital underground and how to access it [57:00]
The illicit drug industry and how disruptive technology is a threat to it [1:00:00]
On “Narco” R&D budgets, drones, submarines and shock and awe  [1:06:55]
Potential threats of artificial intelligence (AI) [1:12:25]
The scalable paradigm shift in modern crime [1:15:15]
A handful of simple steps to decrease the odds of successful attacks [1:18:55]
Low-hanging fruit in terms of security [1:25:25]
On cyber crime cottage industries [1:27:40]
Why there is a Post-It note on every camera of Marc Goodman’s devices [1:29:05]
How the Crowne Casino in Melbourne was hacked for $33 million [1:33:05]

People and Concepts Mentioned (Partial List)

Aum Shinrikyo
Andy Grove
Open-Source Intelligence
Red Team – testing your assumptions and vulnerabilities

“There are three things you can’t fake: 1. Fighting, 2. Sex, and 3. Comedy.” (Tweet It)

- Bryan Callen

Alright, this may be the funniest episode yet.

Bryan Callen is a world-class comic and prolific actor. He travels the globe performing stand-up comedy for sold-out audiences, and — in his spare time — regularly appears on shows like Frasier, Entourage, Law & Order, CSI, Sex and the City, Oz, The King of Queens, and How I Met Your Mother.

Bryan is also INCREDIBLY well read.  Don’t miss the show notes and links below.

In this episode, we delve into the craft of comedy, fixing education (or shortcuts within it), habits and tricks for boosting creativity, writing, and the general pursuit of excellence.

And, of course, eating corgis…

Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream by clicking here.
Download it as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as”.

This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results.

This episode is also brought to you by ExOfficio, which I’ve personally used since 2005 or so. They make ultra-lightweight, quick drying, antimicrobial clothing for men and women. Here’s my own ultra-light packing list (scroll down for video), which went viral.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: Who are your 2-3 favorite comedians? What style or traits make them memorable? Please let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Enjoy!

And PLEASE — Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review here. They’re very important and keep me going.

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Selected Links from the Episode

Connect with Bryan: Website | Twitter
Warrior with Bryan Callen
Comedian – Documentary on the craft of comedy
The Fighter and the Kid – Podcast with Bryan and UFC Heavyweight, Brendan Schaub
QuestBridge.org – Leverage your support for high-achieving, low-income students
Excellent Sheep by William Deresiewicz
1000 Years of Solitude & Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Art of Learning (On Audio) by Josh Waitzkin (My interview with Josh is here)
The Somerset Collection
The Symposium and Dialogues by Plato
Dying Every Day by James Romm
Bryan’s favorite Twitter: Taking Hayek Seriously
Fed Up – A documentary about the food industry
Bad Science & Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre
Nutritional Science Initiative – The Manhattan Project of nutrition (I advise)
Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks
Hardcore History – Specifically, Wrath of the Khans
The Looming Tower & Going Clear by Lawrence Wright
Jazz & Baseball – documentaries by Ken Burns
If This Is a Man & The Truce by Primo Levi

Show Notes

How Bryan Callen and Tim Ferriss started dating [9:45]
On fighting, sex, and comedy [10:50]
How to create a long-term career in comedy [11:45]
On public education [15:45]
Bryan Callen’s creative process [23:45]
Comics who inspire Bryan [34:05]
Bryan’s first great performance [36:50]
How Bryan Callen developed his appetite for reading [42:05]
Bryan Callen’s first paid gig [47:30]
Rapid fire questions: Pilsner, aged wine, politics, pit bulls, hunting, originality, and eating corgis [01:04:45]

People Mentioned

Niel Brennan
Joe Rogan
Keith Ferrazzi
Travis Kalanick
Brendan Schaub
Hunter Maats
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ernest Hemingway
Flannery O’Connor
Fiona Apple
Harry Connick Jr.
Steven Wright
Mitch Hedberg
George Carlin
Richard Pryor
Dov Davidoff
Sebastian Maniscalco
Tom Segura
Bret Ernst
Ayn Rand
Friedrich Nietzsche
Joseph Campbell
Joshua Waitzkin
Steve Jobs
Lawrence Wright
Ken Burns
Primo Levi
David Blaine

This episode of The Random Show is a mind snack… fueled by wine. There are dozens of topics covered in this bromantic session of scatterbrained nonsense.

Like what? To start off: hidden gems in Japan, hating tech, Kevin’s new obsessions (and projects), gifts, books we’re reading, excessive sexual awkwardness, and much more. O-tanoshimi dane!

For all previous episodes of The Random Show, including the infamous China Scam episode, click here.

Can’t see the video above? Click here.

Want audio to listen on the go?  Here you go…

Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream by clicking here.
Download as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as”.

This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results.

This episode is also brought to you by ExOfficio, which I’ve personally used since 2005 or so. They make ultra-lightweight, quick drying, antimicrobial clothing for men and women. Here’s my own ultra-light packing list (scroll down for video), which went viral.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What should other people be more grateful for this Thanksgiving? Perhaps something regularly overlooked? Please share in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Enjoy!

Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review here. It keeps me going…

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Selected Links from the Episode

Learn more about Kevin’s new company, North
Watch-Curious? Check out WatchVille.co
Blue Plate San Francisco – Suggestions: Meatloaf, Fried Chicken and/or Key Lime Pie
Zero to One by Peter Thiel
Refinery29: Style Stalking by Piera Gelardi and Christene Barberich
Refinery 29 – The largest independently-owned fashion and style site
The Art of Robert E. McGinnis by Robert E. McGinnis
The Gibson Girl and Her America by Charles Dana Gibson
Epicureans and Stoics by Axios Institute
The Underground Storyteller by Alex Day
The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz
Hidden Tokyo Coffee Shop — Chatei Hatou Pour-Over Coffee
Lisn Inscense – Japanese Organic Incense
SOG Throwing Axes
Looking to invest in startups? See Tim and Kevin‘s deals on AngelList
MD Insider
How to Win Over 30 Consulting Offers in 30 Days – AngelList Tips
Influence by Robert B. Cialdini
Too Many Cooks


Abbreviated Show Notes

Thoughts on WatchVille  [5:00]
The environment and new book recomendations [11:50]
Fermented coffee beans [18:45]
Tips for ice baths [24:45]
Tim’s next big thing (or not) [40:15]
How to get involved in the tech scene without tons of capital [42:25]
On Influence by Robert Cialdini [45:15]
Too Many Cooks video recommendation [49:35]
Gratitude this coming Thanksgiving [50:50]

People Mentioned

Robert E McGunnis
J.C. Leyendecker
Norman Rockwell
Dmitry Klokov

(Photo: Foxxyz)

“It turns out that writing Tetris on your calculator doesn’t actually win you the cheerleaders.”

-Nick Ganju 

Housekeeping Note: The e-mail subscribers who won the SONOS PLAY:1 (The Best $200 on Sound) are Drew Glaser and Kristopher Chavez. Guys, keep an eye on your inboxes! Are you still not an e-mail subscriber? It’s free, no spam, and I send out awesome VIP exclusives. Click here to sign up, and you can always easily opt out.

In this episode, I talk to my old friend Nick Ganju about ping pong, poker, hit songs, and tackling my most feared subject (oh, the suspense!).

He makes complex subjects seem simple, which is a rare gift.  Nick is one of the few people I consistently ask for advice when trying to acquire tough skills.

Nick is the founder and CTO of ZocDoc, which allows you to find doctors and immediately book appointments online. As CTO, he is responsible for overseeing all software development. It’s a huge job for one of the fastest-growing startups in the US (6+ million monthly users, $95M+ in funding raised to date), and he’s repeatedly proven himself to be a master teacher.

Enjoy!

Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream by clicking here.
Download it as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as”.

This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results.

This episode is also brought to you by ExOfficio, which I’ve personally used since 2005 or so. They make ultra-lightweight, quick drying, antimicrobial clothing for men and women. Here’s my own ultra-light packing list (scroll down for video), which went viral.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY:  Have you overcome subjects or skills you initially found super-intimidating? What was the key moment? Please share in the comments.

Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review here. It keeps me going…

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Selected Links from the Episode

ZocDoc
War Games
The Birthdate Problem
Long Term Capital Management
SMART Goals
Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
Michel Thomas – Rapid Language Learning
How to Measure Anything by Douglas Hubbard
The Handshake Grip - Ping Pong Skills
Loss Aversion
Sunken Cost Fallacy
List of Cognitive Biases
Secrets of Power Negotiating
Getting to Yes
Getting Past No
Across the Universe
Connect with Nick on LinkedIn
Axis of Awesome – The 1-5-6-4 – How to write a hit song


Show Notes

ZocDoc stats [6:34]
Rewinding the clock, comfort with computer science and global thermo-nuclear war [10:44]
What makes the University of Illinois a top computer science school [14:04]
“Coachablity” of computer languages and thoughts for those starting in computer science [16:14]
How to make it easier to develop high-level math and computer science skills [21:44]
Resources and books for optimizing your math/emotional intelligence skills [28:44]
Setting objective goals and how Monsters Inc. can help [30:14]
How to encourage measurable goal selection and tracking within your team [38:14]
Excel spreadsheets? [44:14]
Nick Ganju’s favorite movie [53:14]
Skill acquisition and the glory of ping pong [55:29]
How to practice ping pong when no one is around, plus the most common mistakes [1:02:44]
The daily rituals of Nick Ganju [1:05:44]
What it means to rid yourself of cognitive biases [1:06:29]
Cognitive Biases and how to price anchor like a god [1:11:14]
The Bill Gates-like life plan [1:16:04]
Rapid Fire Questions: Punchable, frequent plays, and how to get people hooked on music. [1:17:39]
Advice for the 20-year old Nick Ganju, or anyone seeking to rapidly develop business skills [1:25:14]
Choosing your fist gig or your next gig -> How to get started [1:27:14]

People Mentioned

Mac Andreessen
Max Levchin
Phil Gordon
Keith Devlin