Tim Ferriss’ Post

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. — Walt Whitman

NEW podcast episode is up! “A Strategic Deep Dive on TikTok, The Boiling Moat of Taiwan, and China’s Next-Gen Statecraft — Matt Pottinger, Former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor” Matt Pottinger is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and chairman of the China Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Matt served as U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor from 2019 to 2021. Before his White House service, Matt spent the late 1990s and early 2000s in China as a reporter for Reuters and The Wall Street Journal. He then fought in Iraq and Afghanistan as a U.S. Marine during three combat deployments between 2007 and 2010. Matt’s new book is The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan. Visit tim.blog/podcast to listen to the interview. Please enjoy!

“If you’re really committed to brain health, you want to be exercising every day.” — Peter Attia (@peterattiamd) https://lnkd.in/emYib_N

What are the top-three activities that you use to fill time to feel as though you're being productive? These are usually used to postpone more important actions (often uncomfortable because there is a chance of failure or rejection). Be honest with yourself, as we all do this on occasion. What are your crutch activities?

Dr. Gabor Maté — New Paradigms, Ayahuasca, and Redefining Addiction (#298) Listen to the episode here: http://bit.ly/2MPS29q

“I sometimes wonder whether conspiracy theories are an attempt to re-enchant the world in a distorted way. It’s like religion knocking on the door and trying to come back in a strange and distorted form. A sense of mystery beyond our own understanding of the world. If you ever talk to conspiracy theorists, that’s the sense you get from them. A sort of almost romantic sense of awe that there is this dark mysterious thing that a rational thing could never penetrate.” — Adam Curtis

What is the smallest meaningful change you can make? Make it small. Small is achievable.

“If you are in an environment where there’s almost no biodiversity, your ancient creature that’s living inside you, your deep design, is terrified because it doesn’t know you can go to the supermarket. It’s just looking and feeling and hearing and smelling. There’s no life around. So the experience of going to these wilderness places tells that wild part of us that everything is okay. We just need to go and harvest a tiny bit each day and there’ll be plenty for everybody, for the family. And you feel, ‘Oh, everything’s all right, everything will be fine. This is good. This is the good life.’” — Craig Foster Listen to my interview with Oscar-winning filmmaker and naturalist Craig Foster: https://lnkd.in/eHUPJZbp Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/eq4MtqVu Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/epWfHhme Watch on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eNJehWWa

Am I hunting antelope or field mice? I often ask myself this, and I lifted it from the most unlikely of sources: former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich. Now, I don’t know Newt, and I strongly disagree with a lot of his politics and deliberate hyper-polarization, but he had periods of nearly unbelievable effectiveness. He is considered by some to be one the most influential conservative leaders in the history of the Republican Party. How did he do it? And how did he even cross my radar? Around 2012, I wandered into a used bookstore and chanced upon Buck Up, Suck Up… and Come Back When You Foul Up: 12 Winning Secrets from the War Room, written by James Carville and Paul Begala, the political strategists behind Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign war room. At the time, I was thinking a lot about strategy, and, first and foremost, this is a book about strategy. It’s worth noting that Newt didn’t always have the nicest things to say about Clinton, to put it mildly. Nonetheless, James and Paul felt it important to include a story about him in their book. Here’s the excerpt that most stuck with me: "Now that he’s in the private sector, Newt uses a brilliant illustration to explain the need to focus on the big things and let the little stuff slide: the analogy of the field mice and the antelope. "A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse. But it turns out that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself. So a lion that spent its day hunting and eating field mice would slowly starve to death. A lion can’t live on field mice. A lion needs antelope. Antelope are big animals. They take more speed and strength to capture and kill, and once killed, they provide a feast for the lion and her pride. A lion can live a long and happy life on a diet of antelope. The distinction is important. Are you spending all your time and exhausting all your energy catching field mice? In the short term it might give you a nice, rewarding feeling. But in the long run you’re going to die. So ask yourself at the end of the day, 'Did I spend today chasing mice or hunting antelope?'" If you look at your calendar for the last month or your to-do list for next week, or the lack thereof, are you hunting field mice or antelope? Another way I often approach this is to look at my to-do list and ask: Which one of these, if done, would render all the rest either easier or completely irrelevant? Separately: Which undone item, if done, would liberate the most energy for me personally? Reread The 80/20 Principle for good measure. And if all of that yields no fruit, you might find that the to-do item you’ve been avoiding the longest, punting from week to week or month to month, is precisely the antelope you should be tracking tomorrow morning. Happy hunting.

"The Master and the Fool" The book Mastery by George Leonard has been recommended to me by many people, including chess grandmaster Maurice Ashley, swimming legend Terry Laughlin, and drumming phenom Dave Elitch. One of my favorite sections is the epilogue, titled “The Master and the Fool.” It explores a question: What are the keys to rapid and lifelong learning? There are many keys, but arguably the most important is found in this five-minute read… https://lnkd.in/dpci597