Timothy Ferriss's Blog, page 102

The Art of Strategic Laziness

David Heinemeier Hansson (“DHH”)

The following is a guest post by Shane Snow, a frequent contributor to Wired and Fast Company.  Last year, he wrote about his two-week Soylent experiment, which went viral and racked up 500+ comments.

This post is adapted from his new book, SMARTCUTS, and it will teach you a few things:

How to use strategic “laziness” to dramatically accelerate progress
How “DHH” became a world-class car racer in record time, and how he revolutionized programming (they’re related)
A basic intro to computer programming abstraction

Note: the technical aspects of programming have been simplified for a lay audience.  If you’d like to point out clarifications or subtleties, please share your thoughts in the comments!   I’d love to read them, as I’m thinking of experimenting with programming soon.

Enter Shane Snow

The team was in third place by the time David Heinemeier Hansson leapt into the cockpit of the black-and-pink Le Mans Prototype 2 and accelerated to 120 miles per hour. A dozen drivers jostled for position at his tail. The lead car was pulling away from the pack—a full lap ahead.

This was the 6 Hours of Silverstone, a six-hour timed race held each year in Northamptonshire, UK, part of the World Endurance Championship. Heinemeier Hansson’s team, Oak Racing, hoped to place well enough here to keep them competitive in the standings for the upcoming 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Tour de France of automobile racing.

Heinemeier Hansson was the least experienced driver among his teammates, but the Oak team had placed a third of this important race in his hands.

Determined to close the gap left by his teammate, Heinemeier Hansson put pedal to floor, hugging the curves of the 3.7-mile track that would be his singular focus for the next two hours. But as three g’s of acceleration slammed into his body, he began to slide around the open cockpit. Left, then right, then left. Something was wrong with his seat.

In endurance racing, a first place car can win a six- or 12-hour race by five seconds or less. Winning comes down to two factors: the equipment and the driver. However, rules are established to ensure that every car is relatively matched, which means outcomes are determined almost entirely by the drivers’ ability to focus and optimize thousands of tiny decisions.

Shifting attention from the road to, say, a maladjusted driver’s seat for even a second could give another car the opportunity to pass. But at 120 miles per hour, a wrong move might mean worse than losing the trophy.  As Heinemeier Hansson put it, “Either you think about the task at hand or you die.”

Turn by turn, he fought centrifugal force, attempting to keep from flying out while creeping up on the ADR-Delta car in front of him.

And then it started to rain…

***

When Heinemeier Hansson walked onto the racing scene in his early 30s, he was a virtual unknown, both older and less experienced than almost anyone in the leagues. A native of Denmark, he’s tall, with a defined jaw and dark spikey hair. At the time he raced 6 Hours of Silverstone, it had been about five years since he first drove any car at all.

That makes him one of the fastest risers in championship racing.

Despite that, Heinemeier Hansson is far better known among computer programmers—where he goes by the moniker DHH— than car enthusiasts. Though most of his fellow racers don’t know it, he’s indirectly responsible for the development of Twitter. And Hulu and Airbnb. And a host of other transformative technologies for which he receives no royalties. His work has contributed to revolutions, and lowered the barrier for thousands of tech companies to launch products.

All because David Heinemeier Hansson hates to do work he doesn’t have to do.

DHH lives and works by a philosophy that helps him do dramatically more with his time and effort. It’s a principle that’s fueled his underdog climbs in both racing and programming, and just might deliver a win for him as the cars slide around the rainslicked Silverstone course.

But to understand his smartcut, we must first learn a little bit about how computers work.

Think of the way a stretch of grass becomes a road. At first, the stretch is bumpy and difficult to drive over. A crew comes along and flattens the surface, making it easier to navigate. Then, someone pours gravel. Then tar. Then a layer of asphalt. A steamroller smooths it; someone paints lines. The final surface is something an automobile can traverse quickly. Gravel stabilizes, tar solidifies, asphalt reinforces, and now we don’t need to build our cars to drive over bumpy grass. And we can get from Philadelphia to Chicago in a single day.

That’s what computer programming is like. Like a highway, computers are layers on layers of code that make them increasingly easy to use. Computer scientists call this abstraction.

A microchip—the brain of a computer, if you will—is made of millions of little transistors, each of whose job is to turn on or off, either letting electricity flow or not. Like tiny light switches, a bunch of transistors in a computer might combine to say, “add these two numbers,” or “make this part of the screen glow.”

In the early days, scientists built giant boards of transistors, and manually switched them on and off as they experimented with making computers do interesting things. It was hard work (and one of the reasons early computers were enormous).

Eventually, scientists got sick of flipping switches and poured a layer of virtual gravel that let them control the transistors by typing in 1s and 0s. 1 meant “on” and 0 meant “off.” This abstracted the scientists from the physical switches. They called the 1s and 0s machine language.

Still, the work was agonizing. It took lots of 1s and 0s to do just about anything. And strings of numbers are really hard to stare at for hours. So, scientists created another abstraction layer, one that could translate more scrutable instructions into a lot of 1s and 0s.

This was called assembly language and it made it possible that a machine language instruction that looks like this:

10110000 01100001

could be written more like this:

MOV AL, 61h

which looks a little less robotic. Scientists could write this code more easily.

Though if you’re like me, it still doesn’t look fun. Soon, scientists engineered more layers, including a popular language called C, on top of assembly language, so they could type in instructions like this:

printf(“Hello World”);

C translates that into assembly language, which translates into 1s and 0s, which translates into little transistors popping open and closed, which eventually turn on little dots on a computer screen to display the words, “Hello World.”

With abstraction, scientists built layers of road which made computer travel faster. It made the act of using computers faster. And new generations of computer programmers didn’t need to be actual scientists. They could use high-level language to make computers do interesting things.

When you fire up a computer, open up a web browser, and buy a copy of my book online for a friend (please do!), you’re working within a program, a layer that translates your actions into code that another layer, called an operating system (like Windows or Linux or MacOS), can interpret. That operating system is a probably built on something like C, which translates to Assembly, which translates to machine language (1s and 0s), which flips on and off a gaggle of transistors.

(Phew.)

So, why am I telling you this? 
In the same way that driving on pavement makes a road trip faster, and layers of code let you work on a computer faster, hackers like DHH find and build layers of abstraction in business and life that allows them to multiply their effort.

I call these layers platforms.

***

At college in the early aughts, DHH was bored. Not that he couldn’t handle school intellectually. He just didn’t find very much of it useful.

He practiced the art of selective slacking. “Some of my proudest grades were my lowest grades,” he tells me.

We all know people in school and work with a masterful ability to maintain the status quo (John Bender on The Breakfast Club or the bald, coffee-swilling coworker from Dilbert), but there’s a difference between treading water and methodically searching for the least wasteful way to learn something or level up, which is what DHH did.

“My whole thing was, if I can put in 5 percent of the effort of somebody getting an A, and I can get a C minus, that’s amazing,” he explains. “It’s certainly good enough, right? [Then] I can take the other 95 percent of the time and invest it in something I really care about.”

DHH used this concept to breeze through the classes that bored him, so he could double his effort on things that mattered to him, like learning to build websites. With the time saved, he wrote code on the side.

One day, a small American web-design agency called 37signals asked DHH to build a project management tool to help organize its work. Hoping to save some time on this new project, he decided to try a relatively new programming language called Ruby, developed by a guy in Japan who liked simplicity. DHH started coding in earnest.

Despite several layers of abstraction, Ruby (and all other code languages) forces programmers to make countless unimportant decisions. What do you name your databases? How do you want to configure your server? Those little things added up. And many programs required repetitive coding of the same basic components every time.

That didn’t jibe with DHH’s selective slacking habit. “I hate repeating myself.” He almost spits on me when he says it.

But conventional coders considered such repetition a rite of passage, a barrier to entry for newbies who hadn’t paid their dues in programming.  “A lot of programmers took pride in the Protestant work ethic, like it has to be hard otherwise it’s not right,” DHH says.

He thought that was stupid. “I could do a lot of other interesting things with my life,” he decided. “So if programming has to be it, it has to be awesome.”

So DHH built a layer on top of Ruby to automate all the repetitive tasks and arbitrary decisions he didn’t want taking up his time. (It didn’t really matter what he named his databases.) His new layer on top of programming’s pavement became a set of railroad tracks that made creating a Ruby application faster. He called it Ruby on Rails.

Rails helped DHH build his project—which 37signals named Basecamp—faster than he could have otherwise. But he wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

When he shared Ruby on Rails on the Internet, programmers fell in love with it. Rails was easier than regular programming, but just as powerful, so amateurs downloaded it by the thousands. Veteran coders murmured about “real programming,” but many made the switch because Rails allowed them to build their projects faster.

The mentality behind Rails caught on. People started building add-ons, so that others wouldn’t have to reinvent the process of coding common things like website sign-up forms or search tools. They called these gems and shared them around. Each contribution saved the next programmer work.

Suddenly, people were using Ruby on Rails to solve all sorts of problems they hadn’t previously tackled with programming. A toilet company in Minnesota revamped its accounting system with it. A couple in New Jersey built a social network for yarn enthusiasts. Rails was so nice that more people became programmers.

In 2006 a couple of guys at a podcasting startup had an idea for a side project. With Rails, they were able to build it in a few days—as an experiment—while running their business. They launched it to see what would happen. By spring 2007 the app had gotten popular enough that the team sold off the old company to pursue the side project full time. It was called Twitter.

A traditional software company might have built Twitter on a lower layer like C and taken months or years to polish it before even knowing if people would use it. Twitter—and many other successful companies—used the Rails platform to launch and validate a business idea in days. Rails translated what Twitter’s programmers wanted to tell all those computer transistors to do—with relatively little effort. And that allowed them to build a company fast. In the world of high tech—like in racing—a tiny time advantage can mean the difference between winning and getting passed.

Isaac Newton attributed his success as a scientist to “standing on the shoulders of giants”—building off of the work of great thinkers before him.

Platforms are tools and environments that let us do just that. It’s clear how using platforms applies in computer programming, but what if we wanted to apply platform thinking to something outside of tech startups?

Say, driving race cars?

***

David Heinemeier Hansson was in a deep hole. Halfway through his stint, the sprinkling rain had become a downpour. Curve after curve, he fishtailed at high speed, still in third place, pack of hungry competitors at his rear bumper.

LMP cars run on slick tires—with no tread—for speed. The maximum surface area of the tire is gripping the road at any moment. But there’s a reason street vehicles have grooves in them. Water on the road will send a slick tire drifting, as the smooth rubber can’t channel it away. Grooved tires push water between the tread, giving some rubber grip and preventing hydroplaning. The slicker the tires—and the faster the speed—the more likely a little water will cause a car to drift.

That’s exactly what was happening to the LMP racers. As the rain worsened, DHH found himself sliding around the inside of a car that was sliding all over the race track. Nearby, one driver lost grip, slamming into the wall.

Cars darted for the pits at the side of the track, so their teams could tear off the slick tires and attach rain tires. Rain tires are safer, but slower. And they take a precious 13-plus seconds to install. By the time the car has driven into the pits, stopped, replaced the tires, and started moving again, more than a minute can be lost.

DHH screamed into his radio to his engineer, Should I pit in for new tires?

Like I said, DHH wasn’t the most experienced racer. He had gotten into this race because he was skilled at hacking the ladder. A few years into 37signals’s success, and with Rails taking a life of its own, Hansson had started racing GT4—essentially souped-up street cars—in his spare time.

Initially, he finished in the middle of the pack with the other novices. But after studying videos of master drivers, he started placing higher. High enough that after six races, he was allowed to enter into GT3 races (the next level up), despite zero first-place wins. In GT3, he raced another six times, placing first once, third another time. He immediately parlayed up to GTE (the “E” is for “endurance”). While other racers duked it out the traditional way, spending a year in each league, and only advancing after becoming league champion, DHH “would spend exactly the shortest amount of time in any given series that I could before it was good enough to move up to the next thing.”

There’s no rule that says you have to win the championship to advance from GT4 to GT3. Nor is there a rule saying you have to spend a year in a given league before moving up. That’s just the way people did it. Instead, DHH compressed what normally takes five to seven years of hard work into 18 months of smart work. “Once you stop thinking you have to follow the path that’s laid out,” he says, “you can really turn up the speed.”

On the rainy Silverstone course, however, parlays couldn’t help him anymore, and slacking was not an option. DHH had to drive as fast as safely possible, and every microsecond counted. In such tight competition, the only edge a racer had was raw driving skill.

Or, as it turned out, a better platform.

SHOULD I PIT IN? The man who hates repeating himself repeated over the radio. I’m going to end up in the wall!

His engineer told him to tough it out. The rain is about to clear up.

G-force pounding his body, DHH cautiously hugged the curves for another lap, and sure enough, the downpour began to subside. By two laps the course was dry. Heinemeier Hansson’s slick tires gripped the track with more friction than his competitors’ newly fitted rain tires and he sped ahead. The other drivers now had to pit back in for slick tires, for a total of nearly two minutes’ delay that DHH entirely avoided.

At the end of his leg of the relay, DHH jumped from the car, having demolished the competition.

The slick tires provided DHH a platform advantage, more leverage to drive faster with the same pedal-to-floor effort. And though driving slick in the rain had been risky, his skill learned by imitating master racers kept him alive.

Reflecting on his rapid ascent in racing, DHH says, “You can accelerate your training if you know how to train properly, but you still don’t need to be that special. I don’t think I’m that special of a programmer or a businessperson or a race car driver. I just know how to train.”

DHH had proven he had the skill to race. Videos of master drivers had helped him to learn quickly. His tire advantage had pushed him ahead of equally skilled drivers, and propelled him to the next level. And the advanced racing leagues themselves became a platform that forced him to master the basics—and faster—than he would have at a lower level.

When DHH returned to visit his home race track in Chicago, the same set of drivers still dominated the lower leagues.

He came back and effortlessly beat them.

***

Effort for the sake of effort is as foolish a tradition as paying dues. How much better is hard work when it’s amplified by a lever? Platforms teach us skills and allow us to focus on being great, rather than reinventing wheels or repeating ourselves.

“You can build on top of a lot of things that exist in this world,” David Heinemeier Hansson told me. “Somebody goes in and does that hard, ground level science-based work…”

“And then on top of that,” he smiles, “you build the art.”

###

Question of the day (QOD):  What other selectively “lazy” innovators can you think of?  People who’ve looked at problems in novel ways, or solved them in non-obvious ways? People who’ve opted for simplicity when most “experts” are choosing complexity?

Please share in the comments.

The Random Show, Episode 25 — Gut Bacteria, Meditation, Startups, and More

If you can’t view the above video, please click here or here. To download the audio as an MP3, just right-click here and choose “save as.”

There are dozens of topics covered in this bromantic episode of scatterbrained banter.

Like what? To start off: tracking gut bacteria, favorite documentaries, keys for novice meditators, startup lessons, Kevin’s new obsessions, and more. O-tanoshimi dane!

The last few blog posts have been rather serious, so this is intended as an informal (but still informative) mind snack.

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

Enjoy!

Select show notes and links are below.  Some good stuff in this episode’s resources…

LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

Visit the Tim Ferriss Book Club to find a new book each month (or so) that’s changed my life
Interview with Kelly Starrett and Dr. Justin Mager on performance enhancement, athletics, and wine
uBiome – Explore your microbiome and optimize it…

My No-Soap, No-Shampoo, Bacteria-Rich Hygiene Experiment – NY Times article
How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream – Article by Robb Wolf
DonorsChoose.org
The 30-Day Challenge: No Booze, No Masturbating (NOBNOM)
Lift – The app that help you reach your goals
Headspace meditation app
Calm meditation app
Sam Harris, PhD on Spirituality, Neuroscience, Meditation, and More
www.SamHarris.org
Drugs and the Meaning of Life
Sup App – Explore the world through one-way live video!
Lumosity -Brain Games & Brain Training
Oculus Rift
Foundation.kr
Foundation Episode 36: Tony Fadell 
www.Hodinkee.com – Top wristwatch blog
Swatch SISTEM51 wristwatch

Movies and Documentaries:

Bigger, Stronger, Faster
Anchorman
Stepbrothers
King of Kong
Man on Wire
Tiny the Movie

 Screenplays:

Princess Bride
King’s Speech 
Casablanca
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Fight Club

Books Mentioned in the Episode

Grain Brain by David Perlmutter
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Taleb
The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb
Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb
Jesus’ Son: Stories by Denis Johnson
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

What would you like us to talk about in the next episode?  Anything we should test out and report back on?

Please click here and let us know in the comments!

The Truth About “Homeopathic” Medicine

Homeopathy — effective, useless, or dangerous? (Photo: Marcos Zerene)

[Audio version]

[Text version]

I routinely use an arnica gel for minor muscular strains. In fact, it’s one of my “go to” treatments.

In 2010, however, I found myself swallowing Boiron Arnica Montana 30C pellets, an oral version that was the only option at the closest GNC. I started at five pellets, SIX times a day–TWICE the recommended dose. Risk of overdose? Not likely.

“30C,” which I looked up that evening, tells you all you need to know.

This consumable version of arnica, unlike the creams I’d used in the past, was a homeopathic remedy. Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician, pioneered the field of homeopathy in 1796, if the term “pioneer” can be applied to alternative “medicine” founded on concepts like mass dilution and beatings with horse-hair implements. From the Wikipedia entry for “homeopathic dilutions,” last I looked:

Homeopaths use a process called “dynamisation” or “potentisation” whereby a substance is diluted with alcohol or distilled water and then vigorously shaken by ten hard strikes against an elastic body in a process called “succussion”… Hahnemann believed that the process of succussion activated the vital energy of the diluted substance.

Riiiight.

Back to 30C. 30C indicates a 10-60  (10^(-60), or 10 to the negative 60th) dilution, the dilution most recommended by Hahnemann.

30C would require giving 2 billion doses per second to 6 billion people for 4 billion years to deliver a single molecule of the original material to any one person. Put another way, if I diluted one-third of a drop of liquid into all the water on earth, it would produce a remedy with a concentration of about 13C, more than twice the “strength” of our 30C arnica.

Most homeopathic remedies in liquid are indistinguishable from water and don’t contain a single molecule of active medicine. In systematic review after systematic review, these dilutive homeopathic remedies display no ability to heal beyond placebo.

I found this particularly bothersome. Bothersome because I appeared to heal faster using oral 30C arnica.

There are a few potential explanations…

OPTION #1 — HOMEOPATHIC REMEDIES WORK AS ADVERTISED

The water actually retains some “essential property” of the original substance because of the beatings and shakings. I give this a probability of somewhere between zero and epsilon (where epsilon is almost zero). It violates the most basic laws of science and makes my head hurt.

NOTE: Some people use the term “homeopathic” interchangeably with “organic” or “herbal”; I am not addressing this misnomer nor the associated compounds. Some herbal, non-prescription medications have tremendous effects. I’m speaking only to the original use of the word “homeopathic” as related to dilutive treatments.

OPTION #2 — THE PLACEBO EFFECT

I didn’t realize it was a homeopathic remedy until after four or five doses, and I had been told it could reduce pain by up to 50% in 24 hours. Placebo is strong stuff. People can become intoxicated from alcohol placebos, and “placebo” knee surgeries for osteoarthritis, where incisions are made but nothing is repaired, can produce results that rival the real deal. This explanation gets my vote. Now, if I could just forget what I read on the label, I could repeat it next time.

OPTION #3 — REGRESSION TOWARD THE MEAN

Imagine you catch a cold or get the flu. It’s going to get worse and worse, then better and better until you are back to normal. The severity of symptoms, as is true with many injuries, will probably look something like a bell curve.

The bottom flat line, representing normalcy, is the mean. When are you most likely to try the quackiest shit you can get your hands on? That miracle duck extract Aunt Susie swears by? The crystals your roommate uses to open his heart chakra? Naturally, when your symptoms are the worst and nothing seems to help. This is the very top of the bell curve, at the peak of the roller coaster before you head back down. Naturally heading back down is regression toward the mean.

If you are a fallible human, as we all are, you might misattribute getting better to the duck extract, but it was just coincidental timing.

The body had healed itself, as could be predicted from the bell curve–like timeline of symptoms. Mistaking correlation for causation is very common, even among smart people.

In the world of “big data,” this mistake will become even more common, particularly if researchers seek to “let the data speak for themselves” rather than test hypotheses.

Spurious connections galore–that’s what the data will say, among other things.  Caveat emptor.

OPTION #4 — SOME UNEXPLAINED MECHANISM

‘Tis possible that there is some as-yet-unexplained mechanism through which homeopathy works. Some mechanism that science will eventually explain. Stranger things have happened.

And while we don’t need to know how something works if we observe it to work (which clinical trials have not, in this case)…

Until something even remotely plausible comes along, I’ll do my best to scratch my psora (an itch “miasm” that Hahnemann felt caused epilepsy, cancer, and deafness) with at least one molecule of active substance.

###

Do you agree or disagree? Do you have evidence to the contrary? Please share your thoughts in the comments by clicking here.

This is something that has bothered me for years, but I’m very open to being proven wrong.

For more material like this article, check out:

The 4-Hour Body

How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream (or Lose 10 Pounds in 14 Days)

Gout: The Missing Chapter and Explanation

The Tim Ferriss Show, Episode 22: Ed Catmull, President of Pixar, on Steve Jobs, Stories, and Lessons Learned

Ed Catmull, President and Co-Founder of Pixar.

NOTE TO E-MAIL SUBSCRIBERS: Please see this post in your inbox for a recording of the recent 2.5-hour live Q&A. Not on the email list? Sign up here and get extras like this for free.

Listen on iTunes, download (right click “save as”), or stream below now:

This podcast is brought to you by The Tim Ferriss Book Club, which features a handful of books that have changed my life. Here’s the list.  You can also find all 20+ episodes of this podcast here. Some are sober and some are drunk,  so you can roll the dice.

Now, on to our guest…

Ed Catmull is co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios (along with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter) and president of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation. Ed has received five Academy Awards, and — as a computer scientist — he has contributed to many important developments in computer graphics.  He is the author of  Creativity, Inc., which Forbes has said “just might be the best business book ever written.” (!)

This episode touches on a lot, including lessons learned from George Lucas and Steve Jobs, the origins of Pixar, personal challenges, routines, and much more.

Show notes and links are below.  Enjoy!

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

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

Show Notes and Select Links from the Episode

Why Ed felt a sense of loss, despite a streak of successes after Toy Story in 1995
The misleading question most people ask themselves when they become “successful”
Why, after wanting to be an artist for most of his childhood, he switched his focus from animation to physics
The congruence of art, storytelling, and science
Why experiencing crises on each project is essential for building a strong, creative team
How Ed connected to the ancient tradition of oral storytelling due to his inability to read poetry
The importance of having “breadth” of knowledge while deep-diving into specialization
Stories of George Lucas’ innovative decisions
The arc in the mythology of Steve Jobs, and what everybody missed
Why Steve Jobs decided to take Pixar public one week after Toy Story’s opening
Which Pixar movies caused major challenges and had to be re-worked
Why all Pixar movies suck at the very early stages
Pixar’s secret to creating stories and movies
The one film Pixar abandoned and the reasons
The book Ed gifts most often
Ed’s daily meditation practice
Why he would not give his twenty-year-old self advice, even if he could

LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

Visit the Tim Ferriss Book Club to find a new book each month (or so) that’s changed my life
Learn more about Alfred Lee Loomis
Pixar Animation Studios
Disney
Find out more about George Lucas
Learn more about Steve Jobs
The Teaching Company
History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts
Learn about Vipassana meditation

Books Mentioned in the Episode

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull
The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
One Monster After Another by Mercer Mayer

How to Never Check Luggage Again

Travel has many joys. Luggage is not one of them.

NOTE: If you signed up for my email list, please see this post in your email (perhaps on Saturday afternoon PT) for the Monday night Q&A info.

This post will explore three options for never checking luggage again. Some of them are extreme; all of them are effective.

In my next post, I’ll detail what I (and some friends) pack in carry-on. Some are surprising and hilarious.

Given that I spend 100+ days of the year traveling, and that I’ve been to 40+ countries, I’ve tested just about everything.

Hauling a five-piece Samsonite set around the planet is hell on earth. I watched a friend do this up and down dozens of subway and hotel staircases in Europe for three weeks, and — while I laughed a lot, especially when he resorted to just dragging or throwing his bags down stairs — I’d like to save you the breakdown. Trip enjoyment is inversely proportionate to the amount of crap (re: distractions) you bring with you.

So, how to avoid checked luggage altogether?

We’ll cover three different options, in descending order of craziness. I promise that something in this post will work for every one of you, even if partially:

– Using “urban caching” for travel purposes

– Mailing instead of checking (and some Steve Jobs-ian quirks)

– Ultralight packing

Many of these suggestions have been given to me by readers over the years, so thank you!

I try and bring such gifts full circle by collecting hundreds of tips, testing them, and publishing the winners.

So here we go…

Travel Caching

I was first introduced to the idea of “urban caching” by my friend Jason DeFillippo.

Remember the first Jason Bourne movie, when various agents are “activated” to kill Jason? One of them lands in Rome, where he accesses a hidden locker that contains everything he needs: a few passports, a gun, ammo, cash in small denominations, etc. That is an example of a single “cache.” (Yes, I’m somewhat obsessed with Jason Bourne)

Doomsday preppers (not derogatory) will often have multiple caches at various distances from a “bug out” departure point like a home or office. In the case of disaster — tornado, terrorism, zombies, Sharknado, etc. — they can set off walking empty-handed, if needed, and find everything they need waiting for them.

But how the hell do you apply this to regular travel? Ah, that’s where things get fun.

Let’s say that you’re flying to the same two cities 50-80% of the time, as I do. When I land in New York City, this is what I find already placed in my hotel room:

It is a trunk that contains almost everything I could need for a week. Believe it or not, it was provided and stenciled by the hotel. All I had to do was ask. (More tips on travel negotiating in the second half of this post)

I refer to this as “travel caching.”

I’ll explain how this can cost less than checking luggage, but let’s look at some key goodies first:

- One (1) winter jacket – I usually live in SF, where it is typically warmer most of the year.

- Cans of lentils and beans, pre-salted and spiced – I dislike waiting 30 minutes for $30 breakfasts. I use Amazon Prime to order Jyoti Dal Makhani or Westbrae organic lentils, having them mailed directly to the hotel.  I eat directly out of the cans.

- Can opener and spoon

- Surge pocket multitool (do NOT put this in carry-on bags). No such thing as too many multitools.

- Jug of unflavored or vanilla whey protein, generally Bluebonnet or BioTrust. I find that whey in the mornings prevents me from getting sick when shifting time zones. It also helps me hit my “30 grams within 30 minutes” rule from The 4-Hour Body.

- L-lysine for immune support (especially after early or late flights), magnesium/ZMA and melatonin for sleep and jetlag.

- Lacrosse balls for rolling out my feet, upper back, chest, and forearms.

- Jiu-jitsu gi for getting my ass mercilessly kicked at the Marcelo Garcia Jiu-Jitsu academy.

- Four (4) collared shirts – I often travel to NYC for business or media.

- Four (4) decent t-shirts, including two V-neck t-shirts (I know, I know), that can used for lounging or casual dinners, etc.

- Socks and undies for one week.

- Two (2) pairs of dress shoes, one (1) pair athletic shoes, one (1) pair hiking boots for upstate adventures.

The best part:  When I check out, I give a bag of dirty clothes to the front desk, they have it all cleaned and put *back* in my trunk, folded and pretty… ready for my next arrival!  They charge it to the same credit card I have on file for rooms.

No packing, no checking, no unpacking, no cleaning.  It’s magical.

So, how can this possibly save you money and sanity?

1) To check an equivalent amount of stuff would usually cost $30+, so $60+ roundtrip.

2) The clothing isn’t new clothing.  Most of us have MUCH more clothing than we need.  I simply leave one week’s worth of less-used stuff in NYC.  No purchase necessary.

3) Two WEEKS worth of lentils, beans, and whey protein cost about the same as 2-4 DAYS of room service breakfasts.  It’s also a ton faster.  Waiting around makes Tim cray-cray.

4) If you stay in a hotel often enough, you can simply ask: “Do you have a trunk or something I could store a week’s worth of clothing in? That way, I wouldn’t have to pack so much when I come here.”  The above trunk was given to me this way, but you can also buy one for $60 or so on Amazon, the equivalent of one trip’s baggage fees.  Then ask the staff (who you should know by now) if you could store a week’s worth of clothing in the storage room, basement, or security office.  This can also be arranged with many people on Airbnb.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is travel caching.  It’s a game-changer.

Mailing Instead of Checking

This is exactly what it sounds like.

Dean Jackson of the I Love Marketing podcast is the person who — for me — turned it into an art form.

The benefit of mailing versus caching: it’s not limited to your most frequent 2-3 destinations.  It can be used anywhere, but it’s most often used domestically.

Not unlike Steve Jobs and his “uniform,” Dean literally wears the same outfit EVERY day: black t-shirt, tan shorts, orange Chuck Taylor shoes, and a black cap when cold. He doesn’t want to expend a single calorie making decisions related to fashion, which I respect tremendously.  I’m a huge proponent of the choice-minimal lifestyle and rules to reduce overwhelm.

In his words via text, here’s how his packing and mailing works. Comments in brackets are mine:

“As you know, I wear the same thing every day…Black shirt, tan shorts…so I have my assistant keep a carry-on bag constantly packed for 7 days [TIM: It's a bag with 7 days worth of "uniforms"]. I use mesh laundry bags with a zipper to put together 7 “Day Packs” with a black shirt/underwear/socks [TIM: You can also use gallon-sized Ziploc bags]. Every day while traveling, I unzip a fresh new pack. When I return, she washes and repacks everything, and restocks my travel-only shaving kit with everything I need.

I have separate chargers, shoes, melatonin, etc., so I never have to pack…and she can ship my bag ahead of me without me having to do anything. Plus, she packs a pre-filled return FedEx shipping label for me, so I can — when I’m leaving — have a bellman come get my bag and take it to the business center to ship back.

That whole rig fits in a carry-on sized bag….7 Day Packs, 3 pairs of shorts, orange Chuck Taylors, charging cords, shaving kit…but that all gets shipped. Then my actual carry on is a Tumi laptop bag with Macbook, iPad, journal, passport, wallet. Using the Tumi, I don’t have to take out my laptop for x-rays, plus it’s beautiful leather with just the right pocket config.

It’s pretty light travel.”

Even if you never want to mail your bags ahead, there is one point you shouldn’t miss: It’s smart to have a travel-only toiletry kit that is never unpacked.

Keep one set of toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc. at home on the counters and shelves, and have a separate packed kit that is exclusively for travel.

This alone has saved me a ton of headache and last minute “Where is the closest CVS? I forgot my dental floss”-type nonsense.

Which brings us to the question of carry-on…

Ultralight Packing

I’ll be expanding on this greatly, but, to start, please read one of my previously viral posts, “How to Travel the World with 10 Pounds or Less (Plus: How to Negotiate Convertibles and Luxury Treehouses).”

You’ll notice my “BIT” (Buy It There) method of travel seems to contradict the travel caching above, but they’re actually complementary.

BIT is ideal for traveling to places you’ve never been, or that you seldom visit. If it’s a third-world country where your currency is strong, all the better. Travel caching is for your 2-3 most frequently visited locations.

To get you in the mood for the above “10 pounds” post, here’s your first ultralight travel purchase: Exofficio underwear.

More soon…

###

Do you like this type of post? If so, please let me know in the comments.

Please also share your own tips!

If it seems you dig it, I’ll detail (at least) the following in my next post:

- My latest findings in ultralight packing

– My must-have carry-on items and subscription services

– Tools recommended to me by elite military and hedgefund managers

– My favorite bags

– Apps and other tricks that get me from home to gate in less than 20 minutes

Until then, start thinking up destinations.

Tim Ferriss Rethinks Email

Pretty soon, many of you will get an email from me.  It’ll probably surprise you.

See, when I sketched out the original 4-Hour Workweek site in 2006 (sorely in need of a redesign), I included an email capture field, as that’s what friends said I should do:

Then I promptly forgot all about it. I hated email, so I didn’t want to send you email. Simple as that. Do unto others, right?

But things have changed.

Now, with Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and hundreds of clones, the Internet and mobile are a battlefield of noise. Even if you “like” my Facebook fan page, my updates will rarely reach more than 10% of you.

For years now, thousands of you have complained that Feedburner delivers time-sensitive blog posts days or WEEKS too late. This means missed giveaways, meetups, competitions, Q&As, parties, and all sorts of fun stuff.

Needless to say, this sucks.

So I reluctantly decided to re-examine email. In a world where people change email addresses less often than physical addresses, it just made sense.

My first step was to dust off the keyboard and log into AWeber, which I’d decided was best for me eight years prior. What I found shocked me. I had nearly 300,000 email addresses from sign-ups! Holy negligence, Batman!

Ah, well. Yet another reason for my friends to make fun of me. Enjoy, Kevin Rose.

But better late than never. Within the next 10 days, I will start emailing new blog posts to anyone who’s signed up (on the homepage or the newer blog form), generally around one post per week.  Plus, you’ll get VIP treatment, like private Q&As, exclusive content, giveaways, and other things that don’t appear on the blog.

Here’s the deal:

- If you haven’t signed up yet (or you’re not sure), please do so now. Here’s the link. No spam, ever. Just good stuff.

If you sign up now, your first email will also include a link to a free download of the entire 4-Hour Chef audiobook, which includes narration by yours truly and Neil Gaiman (!). And to kick things off, I’ll be doing a 2-3-hour Q&A — for email subscribers only — next Monday night, 8/11. Ask me anything: business, personal, “inappropriate,” whatever.  Nothing is off limits. Sign up here to get the details via email.  A recording will be made available to email subscribers who can’t make the live session.

I’ll also be giving away a round-trip ticket to anywhere in the world. For details, you guessed it, you need to click here.

- If you’ve already signed up, you’re all set! Please keep an eye out for a welcome email from “Tim Ferriss” within the next 10 days.

It’s not spam. It’s from me.  Following that, blog posts and VIP goodies will show up, roughly once per week.

If you’re using Gmail and my email ends up in your “Promotions” folder, please do me a favor and drag it to your “Primary” so it doesn’t get lost in all the OKCupid notifications and whatnot.

###

And please realize — I and my assistant get about 1,000 email a day. It’s funking unreal, and it’s brutal. No one is more sensitive to email abuse than I am, so I will NOT abuse your inbox.

If you get annoyed, you can one-click unsubscribe. Easy peasy and no BS.

Things will be intermittent (usually once a week, sometimes twice), and posts will be high-quality (like this or this).

As mentioned, I’ll be doing a 2-3-hour Q&A next week to kick things off, and also giving away a roundtrip ticket anywhere in the world. For details on both, just add your email here.

If you have any questions about all this, please ask in the comments! I’ll be paying close attention and answering as many as I can. I’ve literally put off email for years, but enough is enough. It’s the right thing to do.

And thank you for reading. Whatever this blog has become, I owe it all to you.

Pura vida,

Tim

The Tim Ferriss Show, Episode 21: Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park – Making Art, Making Music, Getting To 60+ Million Albums

Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park.

Listen on iTunes, download (right click “save as”), or stream below now:

This podcast is brought to you by The Tim Ferriss Book Club, which features a handful of books that have changed my life. Here’s the list.

Now, on to our guest…

Mike Shinoda is best known as the rapper, principal songwriter, keyboardist, rhythm guitarist and one of the two vocalists (yes, an insane list) of Linkin Park, which has sold more than 60 million albums worldwide and earned two Grammy Awards in the process.

Mike has collaborated with everyone from Jay-Z to Depeche Mode, and he’s also the lead rapper in his side project Fort Minor, which I’m a huge fan of.

As if that’s not enough, he’s also provided artwork, production and mixing for all the projects mentioned above. The man is a beast… but did he start out that way? His answers might surprise you.

This episode covers how Mike got started, advice for aspiring musicians (or creatives/artists of any type), navigating “entertainment” and Hollywood, daily rituals, how he writes songs, how he rehearses, and much more.

Enjoy!

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Like these episodes? Want me to keep making them? Please leave a short review here. Even one sentence helps.

Show Notes and Select Links from Episode 20…

Mike’s first love, and what he thought he would do with his life
The humble, “boots-on-the-ground” beginnings of Linkin Park
From Linkin Park to Fort Minor, how Mike fills the void in music with what he wants to hear
How Linkin Park band members stood up to a major record label to get signed on their own terms
The story of how a few 19-year-old kids with red hair, tattoos, and facial piercings told Warner Brothers execs how to do their jobs
The importance of developing a fine-tuned radar for the subtle edits that can completely change your art into a “watered-down commercial nightmare”
An inside look at the various techniques to recording music
How songs are born
How Mike finds inspiration for his craft in things unrelated music
Why he will either delete your email or reply with a dissertation
Linkin Park’s rehearsal process
The software Linkin Park uses for rehearsals and shows
The one thing he would change about himself, if he could
And much more… Here’s the episode.

SELECT LINKS FROM EPISODE 20

Visit the Tim Ferriss Book Club to find a new book each month (or so) that’s changed my life
Fort Minor
Music for Relief – Non-profit org founded by Linkin Park
DJI Phantom 2 Vision Quadcopter 
Ableton Live 9
This American Life
Learn more about Rick Rubin
Chase Jarvis’ Official Site
Linkin Park |  Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
Mike Shinoda | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Books Mentioned in the Episode

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Becoming a Category of One by Joe Calloway
Learning Not to Drown by Anna Shinoda

Music Mentioned in the Episode

Check out Mike Shinoda’s Spotify and Beats playlists
Mongol Horde
Doom Riders
Royal Blood

Movies Mentioned in the Episode

The Godfather
The Usual Suspects
Fight Club
Seven
Akira
Wall-E
Ninja Scroll
Mall directed by Joe Hahn of Linkin Park

 

What Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, and Bob Dylan Have In Common

Dr. Peter H. Diamandis is the Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, and co-Founder and Chairman of the Singularity University, a Silicon Valley-based institution partnered with NASA, Google, Autodesk and Nokia. Dr. Diamandis attended MIT, where he received his degrees in molecular genetics and aerospace engineering, as well as Harvard Medical School where he received his M.D.

He’s no underachiever.

I’ve known Peter for many years, both as a friend and as advising faculty at Singularity University. He is known for being incredibly resourceful, but it’s his ability to teach and catalyze resourcefulness that impresses me most.

Here is a short essay from Peter on exactly this.  Enjoy…

Enter Peter

In 1997 Apple introduced its “Think Different” advertising campaign with the now famous declaration: “Here’s to the crazy ones”:

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes . . . the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do.

If you were to just hear these words, they’d seem like bravado — marketingspeak from a company not known for marketingspeak. But Apple coupled sight to sound. Accompanying those words were images: Bob Dylan as a misfit; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a troublemaker; Thomas Edison as the one without respect for the status quo. Suddenly everything changes. Turns out this campaign is not all bluster. In fact, it seems to be a fairly accurate retelling of historical events.

The point, however obvious, is pretty fundamental: you need to be a little crazy to change the world, and you can’t really fake it.

If you don’t believe in the possibility, then you’ll never give it the 200 percent effort required. This can put experts in a tricky situation. Many have built their careers buttressing the status quo, reinforcing what they’ve already accomplished, and resisting the radical thinking that can topple their legacy — not exactly the attitude you want when trying to drive innovation forward.

Henry Ford agreed:

“None of our men are ‘experts.’ We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job . . . Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible.”

So if you’re going after grand challenges, experts may not be your best co-conspirators. Instead, if you need a group of people who thrive on risk, are overflowing with crazy ideas, and don’t have a clue that there’s a “wrong way” to do things, there’s one particular place to look.

In the early 1960s, when President Kennedy launched the Apollo program, very few of the necessary technologies existed at the time. We had to invent almost everything. And we did, with one of the main reasons being that those engineers involved didn’t know they were trying to do the impossible, because they were too young to know. The engineers who got us to the Moon were in their mid to late twenties. Fast-forward thirty years, and once again it was a group of twentysomethings driving a revolution, this time in the dot-com world. This is not a coincidence: youth (and youthful attitudes) drives innovation — always has and always will.

So if we’re serious about creating an age of abundance, then we’re going to have to learn to think differently, think young, roll the dice, and perhaps most importantly, get comfortable with failure.

—-

Editor’s note: The above is adapted from Peter’s book Abundance, which I wholeheartedly recommend you check out.  But let’s talk to you…

What other examples of “crazy” innovators can you think of?

If you’ve been in a job for a long time, how can you generate novel/crazy ideas?

Who has done the so-called “impossible” or shaken up the status quo in a way you respect?

Please share your thoughts in the comments!

RELATED AND RECOMMENDED PODCAST INTERVIEWS:

The 30-Day Challenge: No Booze, No Masturbating (NOBNOM)

Both of these things are very distracting. (Photo: Shawn Perez)

The short version: I’d like to pay you to not drink or jerk off for 30 days. Sign up here and get your monk on.

Sex is A-OK.

The longer version is below, which includes juicy details, more options for women, and some farewell-porn suggestions…

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You know who you are, you filthy animals.

Secret bookmarks to Pornhub (“Discount airfare” – Ha!), secret folders labeled “Tax Returns” for when wifi fails, bookmarks for animated GIFs in case of slow connections (curtsy to Tumblr), Hotspot Shield for when you’re in countries that ban your cherished images (download it before you fly!)…

Oh, wait. Am I projecting again?

Yes, I’ve admitted it before, and I’ll admit it again: dudes watch porn on the Internet. Shocker, I know. All those guys on the magazine covers? They do it, too.

Less obvious, perhaps, is how dramatically your life can change if you quit porn and masturbation for a short period.

I did this for 30 days recently, and — oddly enough — I found it much easier and more impactful to quit booze for the same 30 days. Just a few of the benefits I experienced included…

A dramatic surge in free testosterone and sex drive. Dozens of my seemingly healthy male friends, techies in particular, have approached me over the years about chronically low testosterone. There are many potential causes, including late-night blue light, but removing booze and porn appear to open the flood gates. Research (example, example) shows that alcohol reduces testosterone levels. So…should you be dating more? Trying a little harder instead of wanking, watching Battlestar Galactica, and calling it a night? This will help motivate you.
Increased ability to focus and cognitive endurance. This goes along with increased “T” mentioned above.
Getting roughly 50-100% more done. When you aren’t nursing hangovers, chewing up 3-4 hours per night with friends, destroying your sleep with booze, or procrastinating with porn (you know who you are) — miracle of miracles — you get more done! A LOT more done. In my mind, this alone easily justifies a 30-day booze and porn fast. You’ll clear off that goddamn to-do list faster than Speedy Gonzalez.And remember: sex is still allowed.

Join Me for Another 30 Days

Given how transformative this was for me, I’m inviting you to join me for another 30 days. After that, you can go back to your hedonistic ways. I enjoy porn, but I’ve concluded I can level up by taking breaks.

I’ll refer to our 30-day challenge as NOBNOM (NO Booze, NO Masturbating), as the acronym itself sounds pornographic. We gotta make this sumnabitch memorable.

Next steps are described below.

NOTE: If you don’t masturbate (a lot of women don’t but should), or if you otherwise don’t watch enough porn to care about abstaining, here’s another option:

NOBNOC — No Booze, No Complaining

For this version, please first read “Real Mind Control: The 21-Day No-Complaint Experiment.” Then, join the same NOBNOB challenge page to be part of the community.

Next Steps — Do It Now!

1. STEP 1 - Join the NOBNOM goal page here. This is free, and it will keep you accountable to yourself and others.  This official challenge starts August 1st.  That means you get to go crazy on September 1st.  If you’re reading this another time, you can start whenever.  I’m sure people will still be on the page.

2. STEP 2 - If you’re really serious, up the ante and put some cash on the line. As discussed at length in The 4-Hour Chef, without stakes or consequences, about 70% of you will fail. So… choose not to fail.

Below are two options, and I earn nothing from either. I’d suggest doing both of them, if possible:

A. Create a betting pool with a few friends or co-workers. Each person commits $100 or whatever (enough to sting if lost, but not enough to bankrupt you) to the pot, and those who complete the full 30 days split the pot. Using this type of betting pool is partially how Tracy Reifkind lost 100+ pounds, so you can definitely use it on NOBNOM.
B. Get an accountability coach by clicking here. They’ll email you daily to keep you on track, and you get the first week free by using coupon “NOBNOM.” It’s otherwise $14.99 per week, so the month costs you $45. There are two coaches, and they have bandwidth for 200 people. The coaches: one is a former senior staffer from OneTaste (remember the 4-Hour Body orgasm chapters?). The other coach successfully stopped masturbating and is trained in accountability coaching.

3. STEP 3 - If you’d like to participate in 1-3 support meetings and private Q&As, sign up for my e-mail list and you’ll get the invites. I’ll probably host live video chats, 60-minutes long, and I’ll dedicate 15-20 minutes to the AA meeting-type stuff.  The NoFap page on reddit might also be helpful for some of y’all.

And that’s it!

How You Get Paid

I’m putting $1,000 of my own cash on the line, and Lift (which I advise) is putting up $500, for a total of $1,500.

Here’s how you get it:

1) You must complete the 30-day challenge (Aug 1-31, 2014) on the NOBNOM goal page I’ve linked to throughout this post. We’ll audit this.

2) You must put some of your cash on the line, using one of the above listed approaches. It shouldn’t be enough to hurt you, but it needs to be enough to motivate you.

3) You must leave helpful feedback, tips, and/or encouragement for others, on both that page and in the comments below.

After the challenge, the Lift team, my jury of magic elves, and I will choose the three (3) most helpful people, and each will get $500 USD. Bam!

Get excited and get on it.

So, What Are You Waiting For?

If you’ve been feeling less than super-productive, slightly lethargic, or mildly depressed, do this 30-day challenge. If you simply want to level-up your life, do this 30-day challenge.

At the very least, it’ll make you conscious of automatic behaviors.  Things you’ve done for so long that you know nothing else.

If you’re like me, once the fat starts melting off and you’re feeling like a different person, you’ll say to yourself:

“Holy shit, my baseline for the last 10 years [or 5 or 15 or whatever] has been fucked! I totally forgot what it feels like to live clean.”

Perhaps living clean ended for you after high school, or even before, as it did for me. Why not get reacquainted for 30 days?  Chances are that it’s been a while.

Here’s the first step.

A Parting Gift

If you need a last hurrah before 30 days of being a good boy or girl, here are a few options for party time:

A bottle of 2011 Ménage à Trois red. It’s delicious.
A viewing of “Momoko and Anjelica,” available through Ze Google. It’s also delicious, and DEFINITELY not suitable for work.
A chaser of club soda with lots of lime. You might be having lots of these, so get friendly.

Welcome to Thunderdome!  You’ll thank me later.

See you on NOBNOM central.

Pura vida,

Tim

The Tim Ferriss Show, Episode 20: Dan Carlin – Hardcore History, Building Podcasts, Creativity, and More

The inimitable Dan Carlin.

Listen on iTunes, download (right click “save as”), or stream below now:

This podcast is brought to you by The Tim Ferriss Book Club, which features a handful of books that have changed my life. Here’s the list.

Now, on to our guest…

Dan Carlin is the host of my favorite podcast, Hardcore History.

But… what?! History?! I know. I thought the same thing. How could a history podcast have a cult following?

And yet it did. During research for launching The Tim Ferriss Show, I asked many of the top dogs on the iTunes charts: what is your favorite podcast? Almost without exception, the answer came back: Hardcore History.

Since then, I’ve become friends with Dan (and more obsessed with his show), and this episode explores all the questions I’ve been dying to ask him, including:

- His early experiments

– What has worked and what hasn’t

– His habits, rituals, and routines

– How podcasting became his full-time job

– His “radio” voice and how to find your own

– Creativity

– And much more…

I hope you enjoy it, and listen to at least one episode of Hardcore History. They’re amazing. I’ve included a few of my favorites below.

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Like these episodes? Want me to keep making them? Please leave a short review here.

Hardcore History Episodes Mentioned — If In Doubt, Start with Wrath of the Khans

Prophets of Doom
Steppe Stories
Apache Tears
Bubonic Nukes 
Ghosts of the Ostfront
History Under the Influence
Wrath of the Khans

Show Notes and Select Links from Episode 20

How the concept of Hardcore History evolved into a massively successful podcast
The basic ingredients of Hardcore History’s recipe
How Dan keeps his signature tangents out of the “blue room”
Why he will never do an episode on the history of Southeast India
Advice to those searching for their voice
The dramatic effect Dan loves that would be part of every episode, if he could do it all over again
The upside of Dan’s special brand of masochism
Why he likens himself to a street performer on a really busy corner
Who really came up with the idea for Hardcore History
Dan’s definition of “success”
The gateway drugs of Hardcore History

Links

Learn more about James Burke and his Connections series
More information about Gwynne Dyer
Learn more about Edward R. Murrow
More information on Orson Welles
The Final Countdown movie
Hell in the Pacific series
Find out more about John R. Bolton
Music: Dead Kennedys | Lou Reed | The Seeds | Jerry Lee Lewis
Get free shows at DanCarlin.com or on iTunes
This American Life Podcast
Welcome to Night Vale Podcast

Books Mentioned in This Episode

Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James Romm