#855: Tim Ferriss — How to Quiet the Ruminative Mind, Avoid Traps of Self-Help, and Focus in a World of Promiscuous Overcommitment

**Tim Ferriss** (0:00)
Well, hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferris Show. I'm recording this one on my iPhone because I was inspired, actually, by the episode you're going to hear, the person in question, Dan Harris. And I am now at a secluded mountain retreat to sit and stare at a wall doing meditation. I'm going to share more on that another time. But this episode is going to be a little bit different. I am in the hot seat this time. Dan Harris, more on Dan in a second, interviewed me for his show, The 10% Happier with Dan Harris Podcast. And I thought it would be worth sharing here. We cover a lot of things that have been on my mind in more than one way. So for instance, my most recent brain stimulation protocol. And this was born initially of conversations with the late Nolan Williams. And there's been a lot of trial and error with different doctors, different researchers. And I think I've ended up someplace very, very interesting with non-invasive brain stimulation. But putting that aside, I've also been thinking for a while, meaning decades, but it's taken me quite a bit to actually ferret out the traps of self-help, the dangers of optimization. And these are persistent, almost tectonic plates, I would say, that are elements that you need to nudge in the right direction. Or you can end up going very much in the wrong direction. Dan is a wonderful interviewer and we really got into the zone. So I thought, you know what, why not share this? He is also the best-selling author of 10% Happier and Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, a 10% happier how-to book. He's done a lot more. He's also been on The Tim Ferriss Show, so you can hear him in the back catalog. But I will stop there. You can find Dan Harris and certainly his podcast and everything at danharris.com. That's danharris.com.
And without further ado, please enjoy.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:53)
At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

**Dan Harris** (2:15)
Tim Ferriss, welcome back to the show.

**Tim Ferriss** (2:18)
Thank you, sir. Nice to be back. Nice to see you.

**Dan Harris** (2:21)
Likewise. Let me ask you a ridiculously basic question, but I think maybe deceptively simple. I actually never know how to say, is it deceptively complex or deceptively simple? Anyway, my question really is, how are you? How are you doing these days? You've publicly kind of gone on a ride talking about your own stuff, some of it quite heavy. I'm just curious, how are you?

**Tim Ferriss** (2:43)
That is a both deceptively simple and complex question. My answer, thankfully, is really straightforward, better than ever. I feel absolutely fantastic. We could dive into how and why that's the case, if you'd like. But I would say keeping it short and sweet for the moment, I would say fantastic, better than ever. Mind, body, soul, psycho-emotionally, musculoskeletally, really feeling holistically very good, optimistic, we could keep going. So I'll let you take that anywhere you'd like to.

**Dan Harris** (3:22)
I love to hear it. Seriously, I really do love to hear it. And I would be curious to follow up and hear from you like what has brought you to this point.

**Tim Ferriss** (3:30)
Yeah, I would say a few things. So one of the risks of personal development, or let's just call it more broadly self-help, is that it can very easily become self-infatuation or self-obsession.

**Dan Harris** (3:45)
Yes.

**Tim Ferriss** (3:46)
And the counterbalance to that, the bet that offsets it is, dun dun dun, it's very simple, relationships. Really doubling down, tripling down on relationships. We are evolved to be a social species. And whenever you are in isolation, physically or simply in thought loops in your own head, that tends to catalyze or worsen tremendously any type of instability or OCD or depression or anxiety or fill-in-the-blank psychiatric conditions. So my policies, which were already in place last time we spoke, that I have really continued to invest into are doing a past year review every year, looking at my top relationships that are nourishing, energizing, energy in as opposed to energy out, and then blocking out time in advance for the entire year for extended periods of time with those people. Now extended will depend on your circumstances. For me, that could be anywhere from a long weekend to a week spending, say, five days in the wilderness in Montana with some of my oldest, closest friends, et cetera, et cetera. That will do not to denigrate therapy in any way, but sometimes talking more about your problems, if it were to solve all of your problems, would have worked already. There's a place for talk therapy, but it is not, nor does it need to be the only tool in the toolkits. So simply spending time around your silly, dumb, amazing friends and laughing, whether it's around a bottle of wine or a meal or a campfire, really, really goes a long way. So that's one piece of it. Second piece is to hit a familiar thread is very consistent meditation, typically twice daily, 10 minutes, very, very straightforward in my case. And then also for going out to the edges a bit technologically speaking, there is something that some of your listeners may have never heard of, which is accelerated TMS. TMS stands for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. It's a type of brain stimulation that has existed for decades. But the hardware and the software, everything about these technologies has improved dramatically in the last five to ten years, particularly in, I would say, the last five years, thanks to certain researchers like Nolan Williams out of Stanford, who sadly passed away in the last six months and others. But what accelerated TMS looks like is typically up to, let's just call it maybe one or two years ago. Accelerated TMS takes what you might do in conventional TMS over several months, where you go in, you have this paddle put against your head. It produces a magnetic field that, just to keep it very simple, either excites or inhibits certain parts of your brain, certain types of circuitry, and that can be applied to depression. It can be applied to neurodegenerative diseases, in fact, in some cases. It can be applied to anxiety, OCD, and so on, depending on the target where you place these coils. In the case of accelerated TMS, you're taking what you might do over three, four, five months and you're compressing it into one week. Every hour on the hour, 10 hours a day for one week, you're going in and getting, let's just call it a few minutes, three to nine minutes of pulses on your brain, and then you take 50 minutes off, you go back in, you get hit again, and that has been referred to at least in one format, the SAINT protocol, S-A-I-N-T. They've shied away from it, but it was developed at Stanford, and the SAINT protocol in many, let's call them patients, produces 70, 80% remission of depression. That is quite durable. It's not one shot, you're done. Typically, people will, let's just say, do a five-day sequence, then they might go in and have one to three-day booster sequences three months, six months later. And this technology has tremendous effects. I've experimented with this over the last handful of years. The first time I did it, it had near miraculous results. I went from having severe, and I've been officially diagnosed, so this is not just throwing it around loosely, but moderate severe OCD with lots of rumination. I'm not flipping light switches or washing my hands, but I have these ruminative loops that I get caught in. People, I'm sure some listening can identify with this where you just can't turn off these compulsive thought loops. Could be a grudge, could be a fear, could be something you're planning for, could be a conversation you need to have. It just loops and loops and loops, which causes insomnia, which causes fatigue, and just general wearing down of the system, which leads to depression. I've realized that's my sequence. It actually starts with anxiety, not depression out of the gate. I was having, let's just call it seven, eight out of 10 symptoms when I went in to the first treatment I did of five days. That's really severe for people who are not clear. It's really, really severe. It's affecting every aspect of my life. Had the treatment, there was a delayed onset, and even the scientists most involved with this don't really have a great explanation for how or why this would happen. But nothing really happened for two, three weeks, and then flipped a switch and had basically zero anxiety, zero rumination for let's call it three to four months. I've never experienced anything like it, and that includes psychedelic assisted therapies, which I know very well, and have supported a lot of science underlying. This is a bit of a long answer, I realize. But for people who are interested, I really recommend the conversation I did with Nolan Williams. Then there are different types of hardware. But I tried it then with boosters several times afterwards, null effect, zero, didn't work. I started to lose hope again, because I thought this was going to be a replicable, reliable tool that I could use. I was so excited and did a Hail Mary last ditch round with the accelerated TMS recently. I did this in Northern California. Instead of doing five days, so keep in mind, it's like, let's just call it three months of TMS gets compressed into five days. Instead of doing five days, I did one day, but I pre-dosed with something called D-cycloserine, DCS, as it's sometimes referred to in the literature, is in many ways an antiquated antibiotic that used to be used for tuberculosis, and sometimes urinary tract infections, which affects the NMDA receptors in such a way. I think it's a partial antagonist. I might be an agonist, so don't quote me on it. But the point is, this little drug that is not typically used anymore, is a catalyst for neuroplasticity.