Tim Ferriss Opens Up: What I Do In A Day, Unfair Advantages & The "Barbell Strategy"

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
By the way, this episode, where's the camera? This episode is not for you, this episode is for me. I haven't listened to this guy for a long time, I read his books.
I used to gift, your book was one of the most gifted books I had for like a long time, maybe the first 10 years of my career. And I would say, I'm giving you the four hour fever. They're like, it's called the four hour work week. You're gonna read this, and then for four hours, you're gonna question everything in your life. I call that the four hour fever, it's normal, don't worry, call a doctor if it lasts beyond four hours.
And so today, I have like a bunch of things that I think maybe the audience wants to know. Honestly, I don't give a shit. I just wanted to ask you the questions that I want to know.

**Tim Ferriss** (0:44)
I think that's the key to a good podcast.

**Shaan Puri** (0:46)
Exactly. So one of the things I wanted to know is, you talked about this space where you're like, I'm thinking about what's next. I've been there, I sold my company. What's next? I have a lot of friends that are in that spot.
What's the approach? Because it can be paralyzing to have a thousand options, especially when you have a track record. You have a track record of success now. That almost adds some difficulty to the answer of what's next, because it's got to be good.
It can't be something tiny, right? How does Tim Ferriss approach the what's next question?

**Tim Ferriss** (1:16)
Yeah, I think it can be tiny in a sense, right? I mean, let's just, I'll answer your question, but let's just note that the podcast started as I'm going to try this for six episodes. That's tiny.

**Shaan Puri** (1:27)
So did this podcast, by the way. This is a tiny.

**Tim Ferriss** (1:30)
So I think that to quote Seth Godin, who is really wise beyond even what people would expect.
And he walks the walk. He's a real operator who has authored a contrarian. That's not contrarian. It's an unorthodox life for himself. And I have a lot of respect for Seth. And he said big things, the big dreams, changing the world. Those are easy to hide behind.
He's like, but doing the smallest thing possible, the next action, you can't hide behind that. It's a pass fail.

**Shaan Puri** (2:04)
So big dreams are easy to hide behind.

**Tim Ferriss** (2:07)
Yeah. But when you make something small, do six episodes. If you don't do six episodes, you fail to do six episodes.
But if it's like, I'm going to change the world and do this and blah, blah, blah, great. But like, you know, not to not to like quote everybody in the world, but like kind of David Allen GTD style. Like, okay, great. What's the next physical action?
Okay. Now you have a report card that I can give you because you've just made yourself accountable to me in a way to like do this thing that is very discrete. And so this I don't underestimate the small things. I think the big visions can be helpful at times and I could give examples of that where it's been helpful for me. But to answer your question in terms of choosing the next thing, I'll say upfront, I don't know what my next thing is right now.

**Shaan Puri** (2:54)
But how do you approach that? How do you approach figuring it out?

**Tim Ferriss** (2:56)
Well, yeah, there are a few ways. So the first is I make, I suppose, a menu of things I would like to try. Which is often a list of things I would like to learn.
Like I just returned from three days overseas with a game designer, prototyping games.

**Shaan Puri** (3:16)
Nice. And more games or?

**Tim Ferriss** (3:18)
Yeah.

**Shaan Puri** (3:18)
Yeah.

**Tim Ferriss** (3:19)
And that's something I'm trying.

**Shaan Puri** (3:21)
Right.

**Tim Ferriss** (3:21)
We'll see. And the there's a lot that goes into even choosing the things on that list.

**Shaan Puri** (3:28)
But do you have a box on the menu like the part of the menu where it's like, and we have like sea urchin. That's, you know, you have the weird box where you're like, let me think of some non-obvious.

**Tim Ferriss** (3:38)
Oh, I try to do things. No, no, because there's tons of stuff that I could do that would be straightforward or predictable or reliably profitable. That's the most seductive.
And I'm not saying they're bad options, but I could make a course. I know I could execute that and make it do really well. I know that.