#422: Fear-Setting: The Most Valuable Exercise I Do Every Month

Tim Ferriss (0:23)

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris, and welcome to a very short episode of The Tim Ferris Show. It is going to be between, let's call it 14 and 15 minutes. And it describes something that is incredibly important to me called fear setting. It is the most valuable exercise that I do at least every quarter, usually every month. And I've been using it a lot in these very uncertain times. It is responsible for my best decisions and biggest successes in business and personally. It's also helped me to avoid paralysis by analysis. It's helped me to avoid catastrophic mistakes and also self-destruction. So I want to share this now. I feel there is some urgency to sharing this. It was recorded, that is the audio you're gonna hear, April 24th, 2017, almost exactly three years ago. It is the talk I am proudest of, and it was recorded at TED, who has very, very generously agreed to allow me to use this audio. So courtesy of TED, thank you guys very much. It was in the opening session and streamed nationwide in movie theaters, which goes to show you how much has changed. It has around seven and a half million views at this point. You don't need to worry about the visuals because I described them throughout. The initial picture that I described is a sepia colored or black and white, if you prefer, photograph of me smiling ear to ear, could not look happier from college. That's all you need to know. Last, I would just say there's incredible power in listening. You will get a lot from this, I hope, even if you just listen, but there's much more power and results in the doing. So I would suggest listening to this. And then if you can, go to tim.blog forward slash TED. That's tim.blog forward slash TED, where you can find the video, but you can also find step-by-step instructions, real world examples for doing fear setting yourself. So without further ado, please enjoy and hopefully benefit from this very vulnerable talk and I hope useful talk on the most valuable exercise I do, fear setting. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens, I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably athletic greens. I view it as all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it, in fact, in the four-hour body. This is more than 10 years ago and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals and whole food sourced ingredients, you'd be very hard pressed to find a more nutrient-dense and comprehensive formula on the market. It has multivitamins, multi-mineral greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an immunity formula, digestive enzymes, adaptogens and much more. I usually take it once or twice a day just to make sure I've covered my bases if I miss anything I'm not aware of. 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This episode is brought to you by 5-Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers, and it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self-experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time, because after all the podcasts, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created 5-Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week. It's free, it's always gonna be free, and you can learn more at tim.blog.com forward slash friday. That's tim.blog.com forward slash friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcasts, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with. And little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to 5-Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. 5-Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with 5-Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot. And you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the Spirit Moves.