Best of Design Matters: Tim Ferriss

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This episode of Design Matters originally appeared in July of 2025

**Tim Ferriss** (0:06)
Ambition used to be the hallmark of an enviable life and a righteous path.
I don't relate to it that way anymore. I think ambition is a jet fuel. Not everyone needs to be on a jet, but if you're going to be on a jet, you better make sure it's pointed in the right direction.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:24)
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman.
On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, Tim Ferriss talks about the pleasures and challenges of creating a game.

**Tim Ferriss** (0:47)
Making a game is like choosing a sport at the Olympics. Curling is not exactly the same as high hurdles.

**Debbie Millman** (0:58)
Tim Ferriss is many things. Five Times, New York Times best selling author, a podcaster with over a billion downloads, an angel investor, an experimenter, a teacher, and a risk taker. But above all, he's an architect of questions. This is the fourth time I moved to viewing Tim, and today we get to talk about something brand new that he's been quietly designing, a card game called Coyote.
But before we shuffle the proverbial deck, I want to dig into the evolving mind behind it, the mind that's been asking better questions of the world and of himself for nearly two decades. Tim Ferriss, welcome back to Design Matters.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:45)
Thank you for having me.

**Tim Ferriss** (1:47)
It's so nice to see you.

**Debbie Millman** (1:48)
Oh, it's such a joy to have you in this little studio. So I want to talk a little bit about questions.
Do you remember the very first time you were asked a question that really made you stop and reconsider everything?

**Tim Ferriss** (2:08)
I would say the first that comes to mind, I don't remember the exact phrasing, but it was when I was in probably freshman year of high school. I could think of other examples, but this is the one that pops to mind. And my math teacher at the time asked something along the lines of, have you ever thought about getting out of here and going somewhere else? Meaning going to a different school.
And that possibility, that question had never entered my consciousness.

**Debbie Millman** (2:39)
Really?

**Tim Ferriss** (2:40)
At all. And at that point in time, there were very few things I can control, and there are a lot of things in my life out of control, outside of my direct influence. But the one thing that I felt I could control was academics, right? Working really hard in school. So I did. Achievement. And I did well, yes, the curse of the achiever. Definitely some payoffs, but there are some trade-offs. And at that time, I felt very good because I was relatively speaking, a big fish in a little pond, although I wasn't aware of that. And this teacher then suggested that I had the option, right? There was actually an item on the menu known as other school.
And that led to all sorts of exploration, going to the public library back in the day when you needed to research schools by pulling these giant tomes off of a shelf that were revised every year or two.
And ultimately, it led me to getting some scholarships and so on and going to a boarding school, and that changed everything. You know, six months after getting there, I ended up being an exchange student to Japan, going from Long Island to Tokyo, Japan, and everything changed.

**Debbie Millman** (3:52)
Oh, that changed everything.

**Tim Ferriss** (3:53)
So without that initial prompting from actually two teachers, but the math teacher is the one who comes to mind.
Great guy, also hilarious. He was very, very, very tall. And he had this older convertible corvette that he would drive around. And he was so gigantic that it looked like half of his body was sticking out of the top of the car. This image is also burned into my mind.
And I owe that man a debt of gratitude. Without that, I think I would have unknowingly just followed this script that had been set out in front of me.

**Debbie Millman** (4:31)
We've talked a lot over the years about performance, reinvention, achievement, optimization. You've been evolving quite a lot in the last couple of years. And I'm wondering, what has become less interesting to you over time?

**Tim Ferriss** (4:49)
What a good question. You know, that's a better question than I sometimes try to edge into that territory with a handful of other questions, and that's a much better question. So I'm going to borrow that, if you don't mind.