Transcript of Tim Ferriss (Pt 1) on Biohacking Basics and Rewiring Your Money Mindset

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full-time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high-quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it.

But I'm matching with a co-host, so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at airbnb. Com/host. You know, there was This one time before I did my own money rehab, when I checked my credit score and I realized I had no idea what it actually meant for my financial future, that's when it hit me. It was time to get serious about my money. We've all had that moment, right? Whether it's saving for something big or finally paying off debt, we all get to a point where we need to make some real money moves. That's where Chime comes in. Chime offers a checking account designed to help you take control of your finances with no monthly fees, no maintenance fees, and fee-free overdraft up to $200 with SpotMe. Imagine overdrafter and not having to worry about fees piling up. Chime's got you covered. Plus, Chime isn't just a financial tool. It's a community. You can get boosts from friends to temporarily increase your SpotMe limit. When you help someone out with their own boost, they can return the favor. Friends helping friends make progress. It's that simple.

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Hi, it's not Nicole Lappin. This is Tracy Denunzio. And if you listen to yesterday's episode, you know that I'm here guest hosting for our dear Nicole while she's on maternity leave. My guest today is Tim Farris, a man who needs no introduction, but I'm going to give him one anyway. Tim is a world-renowned expert on self-improvement and self-actualization. He's spent a lifetime studying and teaching the habits and mindsets of the world's most successful people. Tim has built, invested in, and advised huge tech companies like Uber, Facebook, and Shopify. He's written five number one New York Times bestsellers. He's had his own TV show, and he's probably best known for his podcast, which has over a billion downloads, and where he's interviewed everybody from Jerry Seinfeld to Tony Robbins to the dude from my Octopus Teacher. Tim brings free practical education into the lives of tens of millions of people across the globe. I've been lucky to call Tim a friend and a mentor and an investor for over a decade now, and I feel lucky to know the very generous man behind the impressive resume. Tim and I got together in New York and talked for so long that we needed to split this episode into two parts.

So today, you'll hear Tim talk about the biggest lessons he's learned from that star-studded guest lineup over the years, why he thinks money is just a story that we tell ourselves and how to tell yourself a better one, and he'll separate fact from fiction when it comes to biohacking. Tomorrow, you'll hear Tim talk about so much more. We'll get his current daily routine, and then we'll go really deep on relationships and money and who Tim is dating and where he's finding matches now. But for now, let's start with part one. Tim Farris. Welcome to Money Rehab.

Thank you.

Nice to see you. It's so good to see you, my old friend. I am so excited to have you here, especially right now, because I don't know if you realize this, but we are almost exactly 10 years out from when you had me on your podcast on the Tim Farris Show.

Back in the day. I know.

It flew, right?

Yeah, it's so fast.

It was so fast. And you were just getting started. I think it was something like episode 30, and I Early days. And I have 800 or something episodes. Something like that. Yeah. So my first question is, do you remember that you were a little bit drunk when you interviewed me?

Early days, I'm guessing, just to defend myself, I'm guessing This was probably during South by Southwest. Am I wrong?

I don't remember.

My guess is that I may have had some type of commitment beforehand and that I would have had tequila if I had to guess. Or did I get drunk in the episode?

You got drunk in the episode. You had wine. For wine?

Always a risky move.

Is there any chance that you remember what you were drinking?

For wine? . See, I don't drink much wine anymore. I would say I'm actually going completely dry this month, which is not a reflection of being drunk all the time otherwise. But I can talk about alcohol and podcasting. I learned pretty early that you have to really be strategic about how you mix those two. Okay. Because how you perceive yourself as sounding and how good you perceive your healer to be is actually quite a few notches above reality when you get past, I would say, two drinks. But I'm going to guess Rombauer Chardonnay.

Nope.

You remember what I was drinking?

I remember what you were drinking. What was it? K Brothers, Amory Vineyard. Oh, wow. Block 6. Does this ring a bell to you?

No, but that highlights how much of it I had.

Okay. You were into it. It was like a wine that you It's not recommended. Okay. So have a little gift for you.

Oh, wow. Look at this.

Yeah. Oh, incredible. This is the wine that you were drinking when we did our podcast. Holy moly. I was going to ask you. That's really cool. Isn't that wild? That's really sweet. Okay, so there's one difference, though. This is a vintage 2013. You were drinking a vintage 2010. Do you remember what you paid for it?

I don't. I have no idea.

Okay. The bottle of wine you were drinking when we did our podcast together 10 years ago, cost about $100 when you bought it, but it now costs over $1,000. Really? Yeah.

So that just proves that I'm not always a good investor. I sold early. Yeah, exactly.

So this is 2013 because we love you, but not $1,000 worth.

Thank you. I don't even love myself $1,000. Thank you so much. You're welcome. So this will be, I will break my boost fast with Block 6 Sherez.

Thank you. So boost fast? Tell me about it.

Every once in a while, I will abstain for anywhere from a week to a month from anything that I think has become I become impulsive or oversaturated in my life as a behavior.

So what other things are giving up?

I find it easier to abstain from multiple things at a time. I feel like the incremental cost of each additional abstinence is lower. So if you're going to abstain, I like doing more than one at a time. I mean, I'm not sure we want to get in this right now. No, we do. We want to hear you two. All right. No booze, no masturbating, and no coffee for the next month.

Which is the hardest? No.

Just based on my response, I'll let you guess.

Which is the most difficult? Really? But there's benefits to that, I believe.

To the most biblical abstinence. Yeah, there are a lot of benefits. I just feel like anything that has become a coping mechanism for when you feel something you don't want to feel, which could be feeling It could be distracted. It could be feeling stressed. It could be feeling rushed. It could be feeling on edge. If suddenly you have a coping mechanism to deal with that, which can be very socially acceptable, it could just be one glass of wine every night. It could be going out with friends to a party. It could be going to Netflix. It could be getting on your phone and wasting an hour before you get to bed on Instagram. It could be any number of things. And when I suspect I may have one or more of those things, I like to prove to myself that I can stop. And also, this is not too technical, but basically reset my reward centers so that I'm not suffering from some type of hedonic adaptation with things that should be rewarding.

Totally. Hedonic adaptation.

Yeah, it's true for money. It's true for lifestyle inflation. It's true for so many different things. And if you overindulge chocolate, you eat it too much, what happens? You stop getting the same reward from eating said chocolate. So you either need something higher octane or you need more chocolate. I don't think that leads good places, typically. So there are some places where adaptation is great. Weight training, exercise, fantastic. But those are positive stressors. Stressors, whereas a lot of the things that we use as coping mechanisms, I would say, are neutral or negative stressors.

Yes, totally agree. How do I know when I am suffering from too much hedonic adaptation with all my little habits?

If you find a... I'd say if there's a degree of guilt associated with it, if you're like, It would really be probably good for me if I dialed this back, it could be anything. It could be sleeping in, it could be sleeping too much, it could be sleeping too little. There isn't any specific category. It's not like I constantly take a fine-tooth comb over my whole life looking for these things. I think that they're pretty obvious. If somebody just sits down and reflects for a second, What am I doing? When I feel off-kilter or I want to feel better, what do I do? Let's look at the list of things. If it's go for a run, okay, cool. If it's over eat late at night as a binge, probably not. Oh, God damn. Stop it. Look, I screw up all the time, too, not to make it seem like I'm just hitting home runs and pointing at center field all day. That's not how life works. But I would say at least once a year, I like to do an extended fast of whatever my latest list of... It's not really a list, like few compulsive things might be.

Could be sweet, right? I've gone a month without having anything sweetened. That'd be an example.

Is it hard in the beginning and then it gets easier? Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. First week is the hardest.

Tim, every time I talk to you, I feel like I need to overhaul my life just a little bit in a good way.

Just one degree. One degree here, there makes big difference.

You've had conversations with hundreds and hundreds of the world's top performers. What are one or two of the biggest unlocks from guests that you've had in your year as podcasting?

10 years.

Just pick out the top ones. No offense.

Just give me one or three. I would say off the top of my head, a few that come to mind would be, and it's very... I'm going to make a meta observation about this, first one, which is 70 to 80 % of the people I've interviewed have some type of meditation practice. It can take many different forms. It could be some type of repetitive exercise. It could be some type of seated meditation. But it also raises the question for anyone who's studying successes in quotation marks, I think this is a very important stress test, and that is, or at least a skeptical stance you should take, which is, Is this what made them successful, or did they start doing this after they were successful? It's very easy to get those mixed up. That's really interesting.

Yes. Narrative fallacy.

Narrative fallacy. It's very easy to mix those up. So I don't really know the answer. I don't know if it's possible to know the answer, but suffice to say that a very high percentage have some type of meditation practice, which has been a great motivator for me to do the basics. Meditate 10 minutes twice a day is what I'm doing right now.

Okay. First thing in the morning and- I usually meditate after I have a little bit of tea, let's just say.

That's fair game. Try not to do it right after eating. I don't think that's fantastic. Tend to be a little distracted by the digestion. And then before dinner or before bed is usually when I would do it. In the middle of the day, I find too hard. I find it too hard with transidental meditation. They're like, 3:00 PM. I'm like, That's a really, really inconvenient time. Before dinner, or before bed. Good for you for before dinner.

I'm too distracted by hunger, usually.

Just use an app. Make it easy. Do the easy thing first. That's true with any type of new behavioral change. Do the easy thing first. If it's exercise, choose something you like. And if you If you can't find something you like, do the least necessary, not the most possible. If you're like, I'm going to make this New Year's resolution, an exercise an hour a day. It's like, if you have no exercise habit, do 10 or 20 minutes three times a week. Start there. And then you can pass that past fail you've set for yourself. You can always increase the scope of it, but set it up so that you can win in the beginning. So for me, 10 minutes twice a day, I can't legitimately experience Excuse not doing that. If you don't have 10 minutes twice a day, you don't have your priorities straight at all. You have no control over your life if you can't save 10 minutes twice a day. So I'll use an app. There's an app called The Way with a guy named Henry Shuckman that I've been using now for the last month or so. I invested in it a long time ago because I love Henry.

He's actually been on the podcast twice. He's a Zen master. I hate that term master, but he's one of the few Zen teachers, one of three or four, authorized to teach in the United States in this particular Zen tradition. And I really find it deeply settling in some way. The metaphor I would use, and I'm borrowing this from someone who wrote this a long time ago. Can't remember the attribution, some Japanese monk. And he said, basically, meditating is a practice. It's called practice for a reason, because you may sit down and feel like you're doing nothing. You may feel like your monkey mind is just going burserk with your eyes closed. But each time you sit and you're still, it's like taking a muddy glass of water and putting in just a little bit of clear water. And every time you sit, you're putting in clear water. And as you sit more and more, it becomes more and more transparent, and the sediment settles. And that's, I think, very reassuring for people who sit and they're like, I can't do this. I'm not built for this. And it might take a while. What I've noticed for myself is after, and you don't need to use this app, you I think that the Waking Up app with Sam Harris is also great.

The introductory course, specifically, I think you could also do TM. I did TM for a long time.

Tm, transinductive meditation.

Transindical meditation, not trademarks. Yeah. And that's one observation. I would say as it relates to this audience, Seth Godin, and I'm paraphrasing here, he is very wise and leads a very unorthodox life that he's crafted through deep thinking and is a very present husband and father. I really admire him a lot. And he has said something along the lines of money is a story. Past a certain point, money is a story that you tell yourself. So come up with a story that you can live with. I think that's really important.

What does he mean by that?

Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full-time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high-quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take Take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest friendly.

I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at airbnb. Com Host. You know, there was this one time before I did my own money rehab, when I checked my credit score and I realized I had no idea what it actually meant for my financial future. That's when it hit me. It was time to get serious about my money. We've all had that moment, right? Whether it's saving for something big or finally paying off debt, we all get to a point where we need to make some real money moves. That's where Chime comes in. Chime offers a checking account designed to help you take control of your finances with no monthly fees, no maintenance fees, and fee-free to overdraft up to $200 with SpotMe. Imagine overdrafting and not having to worry about fees piling up. Chime's got you covered. Plus, Chime isn't just a financial tool. It's a community. You can get boosts from friends to temporarily increase your SpotMe limit. And when you help someone out with their own boost, they can return the favor.

Friends helping friends make progress. It's that simple. So why not make your fall finances a little greener? Open your Chime account in just two minutes at chime. Com/mnen. That's chimed. Com/mnen, as in Money News Network. Chime feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp NA or Stride Bank NA. Members FDIC. Spot me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boots are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to chim. Com/disclosures for details. And now for some more money rehab.

What does he mean by that?

Money is and can be an abstraction of sorts. It'd be very hard to survive by eating your money. You're using it in exchange for other things. And so some people want success. Okay, what is that? And so if you don't define that very carefully for yourself, what does success mean? Then you're going to wander in a lot of unproductive directions. This is true with power. I know I always want to be powerful. I want to be free. Okay, what does free mean? So I think definition of terms is really important. And with money, when we define it, it's really telling the story of what money means to you, what it signifies, what it enables or disables. What is the story you're telling yourself? So for instance, when I was younger, I didn't grow up. My family didn't have a lot of money. So the story that I heard effectively because we were operating from a really scarce mindset because we didn't have money, and it was I've never said this directly, but if you have money, all your problems go away. It's like, Wouldn't it be nice if we had money? If money only grew on trees, you have to have money to make money, which isn't true, by the way.

Then the story I subconsciously crafted from that had all these features ended up not being true. Having to have money to make money. Not true. And also money will solve most your problems. Not true. Money solves money problems. How you relate to it is It will determine whether you feel like you have enough or not enough. It will determine whether you feel successful or not successful. How much of a role it plays in your life overall compared to other things: family, personal interests, friends, Where does money fit into the lineup? All of these, I think, are worthwhile questions to ask oneself, because I know, and you also have met some of these people, people who have hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of who feel like they just need to hit this slightly larger number, and then they'll know everything can be okay, which is patently absurd, right? Yes. But that is the story that they've chosen to tell themselves, which is informed also by their peer group. So if you have a billion dollars, but all the people you're hanging out with have 2, 5, $10 billion, then you're not going to feel successful.

If the story you tell yourself is that you measure that self-worth by the size of your bank account or stock portfolio, whatever it might be. So the way that Seth encapsulated that, as I interpret what he's saying, because he has made a lot of decisions in his life to, for instance, not start additional startups, and in place of that, focusing on having dinner with his family every night and cooking with his kids and making hand-carved canoes and all these various things that he's done. And that's not by accident. He decided that, and I'll give another paraphrase. Let me think about this. This is from Tim O'Reilly, who is founder of O'Reilly Publishing. At one point, maybe still very successful, influential technology publisher. So if you wanted to learn C++ or whatever, you would buy an O'Reilly book. And I find him deeply fascinating. And one of his quotes, which goes well with Seth's, is, Effectively, money is like gasoline, but just make sure if you're on a road trip, the goal is not to do a tour of gas stations. That's good. It's good, right? That's very good. I'm not getting the quote totally, but you get the gist of it.

Totally. I think a lot of folks end up doing tours of gas stations. That is also unhealthy.

What are some of the things that a of wealthy, successful people tell themselves or tell each other that becomes unhealthy?

I think that one is rationalizing all sorts of reasons why they need to make more money, because they often have been so fixated on competing to validate themselves and making money to validate themselves that they've let most of their other interests completely atrophy. They don't know how to do anything else. But after they've made X amount of money, for some people, that's a million dollars where they feel like they've made it. For some people, that's 10, 20, 100 million, a billion, whatever it might be. At that point... Am I allowed to curse? Yeah. Okay. They can't say, I don't have enough money without looking like a complete asshole. They can't say that. That has been taken away. So what do they do? They come up with all of these workarounds where they're like, Now it's about compounded It's an annual growth rate. What's the percentage growth rate? Now that I can't really, with a straight face, talk about some magical number I need. It's an addiction. It's an addiction. So they shift to that, they shift to legacy, which is this very nebulous thing. And by the way, if you give your kids too much money, from what I've seen, it completely ruins them, as far as I can tell.

So that is also ridiculous. Come on. We don't even know. Most of us don't know. Alexander the Great's full name. So are you really going to be remembered 200 years from now? Of course you're not. Come on, let's be realistic. So that whole fool's errand, I think, is silly. There are aspects, psychological aspects to it that I can relate to. I feel fear of death, mortality. Okay, fine. I get it. You're looking for something to exist beyond you? Yeah, plan yourself. Okay, fine. Yeah, totally. Then there's the, I'm not going to give money to charity just yet because if I just compound, and then when I'm much older or dead, it It'll be such a bigger number. I'll be able to have so much more impact.

I'm so much more generous that I need to hold on to my money right now.

I call bullshit. I call 100% bullshit. That is just people who are rich and stingy wanting to be richer. That's it. Absolutely. That's it. Full stop. Because the problems are also compounding just like capital. So you could intervene with less money now to help bend the arc of history with respect to certain problems, versus 20 years from now. I think, at least for me, it's important to have some identity diversification by maintaining some other deep interests so that you don't paint yourself into a corner where you have one path for self-validation, and that is more money. That is a really bad position to be in.

So, Tim, what was it like for you? Did you have a number where you were like, This will be enough? Have you made enough?

What's the number? Yeah, I've made enough. Number one, I don't really have a super high burn lifestyle. I'm not cheap. Maybe I'm cheap with certain things, but- You're minimalist. Yeah, I'm minimalist. Everything I'm wearing right now, except for the shoes, I got for free. I'm not flashing a lot of fancy brand. Yes, you also rolled in here wearing shorts. Yeah, I came in wearing shorts, which I also got for free. There is that. You can take the boy out of Long Island, but maybe not the- Send free clothes. Long Island out of... I've got plenty of clothes. I got more than enough clothing. I don't feel like I need more money. I'm very fortunate in that way. If you look at some of the And the decisions I've made over the last handful of years, they are clear indicators that I have come to that realization in the sense that, for instance, before we started recording, and maybe some of it was included, who knows, but we were chatting about recording and how impressive this entire studio is and how my recording studio basically fits in my backpack.

Two turntables and a microphone. That's Tim's whole stuff.

It's two lav mics that I could hold in the palm of my hand and I have one headset if I'm doing recordings remotely. That's it. It can literally fit in my backpack. I could have four such studios in my backpack, no problem, and have largely minimized video In part because I do not want to have a fixed location. I do not want to require people to travel to me. I want flexibility and options. All of that is at great financial cost because- If you did and had a whole studio and did a fancier production, you could probably be growing your audience and distributing across more channels. Yeah, YouTube is the growth mechanism. Yeah.

Didn't you have a TV show at one point? I did. I remember seeing you on my Apple TV. Oh, yeah.

I did two TV shows. I think at that point, this was also quite a while ago. So this was when TV was, as network television and cable, both combined, more relevant. But in a cable-cutting world, It just really isn't necessary. And there's so many amazing productions on YouTube, on Instagram, on TikTok. There are people who are really good and rival anything you would see on broadcast. And they do it for far less money, far less bloat, far less bureaucracy. It's wonderful. And that's not the game I want to play. And I think it is worth contemplating. I think I think about this a lot, that above a certain point on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you have shelter, if you have warmth, if you have food, a handful of other basic necessities, everything beyond that that you choose to do is a game of some type. And people might say, Well, hold on. I need to pay my mortgage. I need to do this. Yes, true.

But that's shelter. That's right there in the basics.

Yeah, that's shelter. That's in the basics, right? Or you're renting. Now, so I would say I'll say two things, and this will actually tie into another podcast guest. So you're choosing to play a game. And the first key is to be aware that's what you're doing. And that the goal for me is not First and foremost, to get good at the game, meaning whatever game I've subconsciously or accidentally ended up in is to choose the right game.

Tim, this is good. I want you to say it again slowly. Yeah. Anything beyond your basic needs is a game?

Is a game. There are rules that you're implicitly or explicitly agreeing to. There are conditions for winning or not winning. Okay. And these are all stories that you tell yourself, probably in a peer group.

Right.

And you don't have to play that game. There might be costs to not play in that game, but you don't have to play that game. It's not a matter of life and death. And I think much of my time is spent thinking about the games I want to play and what games am I playing right now that may not be serving me, which is very closely tied to what stories am I telling myself, right? What thoughts am I taking to be true, i. E, beliefs? You can come up with a lot of interesting workarounds or alternatives once you start poking at that stuff. And for instance, if you happen to live in I'll give some coastal examples because they're just easy. If you choose to live in, say, LA, what's the game a lot of people are playing in LA? It's the Fame game, right? If you're in New York, what's one game that a lot of people are playing in New York? It's the money game. Go to DC. Okay. What game are people playing there? The power game. And then there are many other... There are a million other games. You can with yourself?

Like internal games.

Yeah, there's tons of that. I would just say, if you had to make a parody, like a Seinfeld episode, that's too dated. But if you had to make an episode that was like a parody of your friend group, what would be the games that your friend group are playing? Because chances are you're playing the same games. It's like, what would a Larry David, Curb your Enthusiasm episode, pick your... I'm going on the string of Larry David from Seinfeld to Larry David. But you get the idea. If you're going to make a 30-minute parody of including your friend group, what would you make fun of? Because chances are those same things apply to you on some level. And you can get there maybe through humor, to some important truths that might be hard to tackle head on otherwise.

Do you think most people are playing a game that they landed in by default?

Yeah, for sure.

Not even really knowing what game they're playing or why.

Sure. Or they started playing a game deliberately, like I did with entrepreneurship, with a certain set of beliefs about the game. In other words, when I make X amount of money, when I make a million dollars, I will be a millionaire officially, and that will mean I have won, and then I can make X % per year, also another assumption and belief, based on that, and I can do all the things I want to do. But then to focus, to get to that million dollars, what happens? You ignore all of these facets of your If potentially, or you neglect them, and then you get to a million and you realize the one thing that you've become really good at to the exclusion of other things is making money. So what do you do? Now you decide you need five million.

Right. And also because if you want to feel good about yourself, you want to wake up every day and do what you know you're good at so you can win at something. It's very hard to switch gears when you've only developed that muscle.

Yeah, exactly. For me, having some type of sports component has always been really important because things can take away your money very easily. This is fortune, meaning the fates. Yes. Chance. Yes. Can do really gnarly things to your money. And if you have all your eggs in that basket, I think it makes you fragile. So for me, if my business, for my podcast, or my podcast or whatever isn't doing as well as I would like it to do, you can measure that a bunch of different ways. If I had a good day, like I came here from archery, right? If I had a good day doing archery and I'm taking it really seriously, it's still a good day. And that makes me more anti fragile. It makes me more resilient. So I try to have at least a few of those interests that are, not to get too fancy, but uncorrelated, right? This is a show about money, right? You can talk about uncorrelated investments. You can also talk about it with identities, and you can talk about it with interests.

It's like a diversified portfolio of your identity. So you're not overly committed to one thing, and if it goes bust, you go bust. Do you think there was any area that as you were building your money, your fame, your career that you neglected?

Oh, sure. Yeah. There have been times, certainly when I was neglecting self-care, sleep, consuming too many stimulants to stay up, maybe drinking too much. It could be anything like that when you are just running on fumes, when you've pushed it too hard. Yeah. Something's got to give. Yes. And that might be time with your friends. It might be time with your significant other. It might be time with your family. It might be getting to the gym or doing some type of exercise. It might be your diet. Maybe you're stressed out. So instead of reaching for a glass of wine, you reach for a bag of chips. It's the same thing. Yeah, totally. Different tool, same job.

So what happens to Tim Ferrace when you're not taking care of yourself?

I feel like in the last decade or two, I've been quite good about catching myself before I get to Code Red.

You are quite good at Yeah.

So what happens to Tim? I think the first thing to suffer is typically sleep. Okay. And in a sense, I'm grateful for that because it is self-limiting.

Like, you just ran out of steam, and you have to fix it.

Yeah. If you sleep poorly for long enough, you're going to crash. And then that's the wake-up call. But in the last, probably 20 years, certainly, mostly, especially in the last decade, I I think with certain non-negotiables, I've been pretty good at avoiding that. I think mentally just categorizing certain things, like for instance, the meditation, you categorize that brushing your teeth or taking a shower. You're not going You can go a week without showering if you're exercising, right? Okay. Then you can't go a day without meditating.

That's a good thing to put in all of our brains.

How many people love brushing their teeth? I'll do it, but it's not like getting a massage. I'm not like, Oh, yeah, baby. Swedish massage gums. I'm not into it, but I do it. Why? Because you've conditioned yourself to do it. It is non-negotiable. You've told yourself it's non-negotiable.

I don't know. I'm going to tell myself now that not meditating is so gross. It's like not showering. No, exactly. Because you're like, How could I not find 10 minutes a day? I don't find 10 minutes a day all the time. And I'll get in bed and be like, Oh, how did I not do that?

That's also one of the benefits of just saying, It doesn't matter when you do it. If you do it right before bed, great.

Yeah, just get it in.

I would say, and this is borrowing from somebody I also can't remember the attribution, If you don't have 10 minutes a day to meditate, you need 10 hours. It's symptomatic of other problems. I would say, Okay, fine. If we're in a negotiation and you're saying, I don't have 10 minutes twice a day, fine. Okay. 30 seconds twice a day? Do you have that? Nobody really with a straight face can say no. It's like, All right, now we're just determining. It's not whether you do it or not. We're just negotiating the duration. Maybe that's it.

You flip the switch to doing it, and then you build, and you build, right?

One song? There was a point when I was running really ragged, and I just decided, Okay, I'm going to listen to... I was really into it. I think he's an amazing musician, Prince. So I wanted to listen to some feel-good Prince song. I was like, All right, I'm just... I have to meditate once a day to one song. That's it. And that was the foot in the door. You don't have to get the whole body in the door. Just get the foot in the door.

And it's like a little reward because you get to hear a song that you like. Sure.

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Okay, so you were the original or one of the original biohackers. Now all that stuff has gone super mainstream. We're all like, We're listening to Huberman and Peter T, all these guys you're friends with. And it's like, We need to all be millionaires millionaires and have seven hours a day. I have to cold plunge, but I have to also heat. I need my red light. I have to don't drink coffee. No, drink the coffee.

When the morning routine is three hours long.

Yeah, and the evening routine and all that. So help us separate the wheat from the chaff. If I'm not a millionaire, if I don't have a three-hour time span for my morning routine, what are the must-haves?

So I've changed perhaps my viewpoint on a lot of this in the sense that I used to test everything imaginable. I was the human guinea pig. I was way out at the edges, and I don't really do much of that anymore in the sense that I think health very often is what we abstain from as much as it is what we do. It's a very... Look, I love the United States. I love it. But it's a very American thing, at least prototypically American thing, to think more is It's very much part of the ethos of the country. And to look for things to do, because I think Americans have that Protestant work ethic, and if it is to be, it is up to me, and I must make it happen, which implies doing things, which also often implies adding things, which is why the supplement markets do so well in the US. But I have started to look, and I will answer your question directly and give you a couple of easy things, that what you don't do is as important as what you do. So for instance, maybe you're not going to see it on camera, but I have a lot of people ask me about, believe it or not, skincare.

I'm 47. And they're just like, What do you do? Because the photos of me from 10 years ago look the same as they do. I don't look discernably different. And among other things, I'm like, Number one, maybe it's just genetics. Who knows? I don't think so, though. My family It's not like they all look like Benjamin Button or something.

Cover your ears, Tim's family. Yeah.

No, I'm just saying it doesn't seem to be purely genetic. I would say, as an example, the only soap I use, and this is not a paid endorsement or anything, is Dr. Bronner's unscented baby soap. That's it for everything. Now, I have the luxury of doing that because I'm bald, too. But I want to avoid phthalates. I want to avoid... Which often can can be found through fragrances that very often come together, and make whatever I put on my skin as innocuous as possible. And skin is an organ. You absorb a lot through your skin. I very rarely, this is not medical advice, but very rarely use any sun protection. I just moderate my skin exposure to sun. If you have to put a bunch of chemicals on your skin to be out in the sun for long periods of time, don't be out in the sun for long periods of time. There are some exceptions. If I'm going to go surfing, fine. I don't want to be turned into a lobster.

And you have light eyes, right? So that goes with the skin that can get damaged.

Yeah, very sensitive.

And so on and so forth of food. There is- Your skincare routine is Dr. Bronner's and go in the sun sometimes. Yeah.

I literally don't. I don't put other shit on my face or on my body. I think it is a gamble. You just don't know the long term.

Like more is more, but more is not better. And doing more. The temptation to do more doesn't always- I'll give you, this is going to be a little digression, but I'll give another example.

So people have issues, whether it's not medical advice, again, not a doctor, don't play one on the internet, so talk to your general practitioner. But whether it's digestive issues, IBS, rheumatoid arthritis or whatever, people are looking for what to add, what pill to take, what thing to do to fix it. There is an interesting book. I don't love every aspect of it, but I believe it's called The Oldest Cure. It's a book about fasting. How many issues seem to resolve themselves if you just fast? It's not suitable for everyone, but by the way, we're evolved to handle fasting. How many things just go away? If you stop, if you give your body a chance to rest, as all animals do, and just take a break from food, or take a break from carbohydrates and go on a ketogenic diet. For instance, a lot of these intractable, sometimes considered untreatable psychiatric conditions respond really well to something that's now called metabolic psychiatry, which in simple terms, is putting people on a ketogenic diet. It's protein of fat. Chris Palmer of Harvard, if people want to look into this, has spoken really well on this. I interviewed him on the podcast, but he has a book as well.

And people who are on a dozen medications for borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, go on a keto-junk diet, and literally within a week, 90% of their symptoms go away. So for me, I think about, maybe a better way to put it, is subtraction as much as I think about addition, whereas previously, I think I was very addition-focused because that's how you come pre-programmed if you are in the US, in a lot of places. But you come pre-programmed to look for what to add. And I think that in a lot of cases, that's a mistake. Okay, so these One of the things I think of. I'm not going to say it applies to everybody, but just in terms of health- Your mileage may vary. Yeah, your mileage may vary. So number one, diet and exercise, it sounds so boring. But the further along people get, if you look at, say, Peter Tia, who is very credible and knows how to read research, knows how to perform research, and does a great job, I think, on the drive of his podcast, and also on his website and in his membership, pieces of his program of breaking down scientific studies and showing where things are hyperbole, where things are exaggerated, and where things are mistranslated by the media.

Very valuable. He has a series of blog posts called Studying the Studies, which I encourage everybody to read. But the point of saying all that is that the more he learns, the more he's like, Yeah, you got to do weight training. You got to do zone 2, which is getting your heart rate, certain types of cardio. Probably a good idea to limit some of your carbohydrate intake. That's what you should do. For instance, I've spoken to researchers at the very, very tops of their fields who specialize in things like metformin. Metformin is a drug that, like a lot of drugs, like GLP-1 agonists, like Ozempic and so on, these were designed for type 2 diabetics in most cases, or in a lot of cases. Then rich people start toying with them for weight loss or whatever it might be.

Longevity- I love how you say it like that because it's always it gets in the hands of longevity medicine doctors, and we figure out- Yeah.

It starts with rich people who test it on themselves, and then it might start with bodybuilders or people wasting diseases. These edge cases then bleed in, and then they become bigger things. But I was talking to this, and a lot of these... I'll give an example of something that some very wealthy people do. They might use something like metformin for longevity. They They don't really have their diet or exercise super dialed. They're half-assing it, but they take metformin. And when I talk to, I'm not going to mention my name, but a very famous researcher at a very well-known university, and he's like, Yeah, I don't think it makes any sense for you to take metformin. I was like, What do you mean? And he's like, You're already getting 99% of the benefits by having your exercise and diet dialed. He said, If you have a huge deficiency in those areas, yeah, you'll see some benefits because you're using it as a correction for other your deficits. But if you're already doing what you're doing, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

That's not what I expected you to say. What are you expecting? I expected you to say that nobody should take metformin until or unless they've got their diet and exercise dialed in. We're adding all these things when 99% of the lifting is just doing this. But you're saying people should use it to compensate if they're not- No, he's not saying they should use it to compensate.

Or they do. He's saying people do use it to compensate. But if you're already getting exercise, you don't need exercise in a pill. We know that exercise, as long as you don't get injured, has pretty limited side effects. We've been exercising as a species for a long time. We've been doing manual labor for a long time. Whereas metformin? Really? Who knows? There are lots of drugs that come out, like thalidomide. Remember that one? There are drugs- Takes a long time. Takes a long time to figure out, wow, that was a disaster. And now people are having I'm like three-eye babies. Fantastic. I do think less is more. And if someone were going to... You don't need a $30,000 cold plunge. Number one, if you wanted to do something like that, you can get a $100 inflatable cold plunge on Amazon.

Okay, but in fairness, I have that, and it's super annoying. Because you have to put the ice in it. It is annoying.

Look, I've done it, too. I've done it. It's annoying, but it's not expensive.

It's not, and it's a good way to see Try before you buy it. Try before you buy. Does it benefit you a lot? Or are you really good to do it?

Also, forget about the inflatable thing. Look, go to a gas station. This is what I did for years, way back in the day. Just buy bags of ice, put it in your bathtub. Try it out for a few weeks.

See what it does for you. Because the thing about a cold plunge is that you're doing it for just a couple of minutes. And so for all that labor and all that work that you have to do to create the cold plunge or all the money you're going to spend, is that the highest return, ROI, for weight investment?

Yeah, it depends. For me, it's a very good investment because it helps with anti-inflammation without me chewing on Advil all day with various sports injuries I've accumulated, which comes back to the exercise, because it's like, Don't overdo it. It's like my neck, my back. Oh, I mean, I've had 20 plus fractures. So, Oops. But secondly, mood elevation. Oh, interesting. So for antidepression, for anti-anxiety, cold for me is the best pill you can buy.

How do you figure that out? Do you not do the cold and then do the cold and Can you say a change in your mood? Oh, yeah. It's super obvious. You run your own little experiment. It is super obvious.

It is super obvious to you. Oh, it's super obvious. It's not subtle. It's not subtle. And cold baths used to be prescribed by doctors for melancholy back in the day. What is this? Depression. It's just an older label for it. Then that fell out of favor because it's a pain in the ass to administer. People would go to these sanatoriums, and they'd sit in a bath with their head popping out with a cover. It looks bizarre. People didn't want to go to these places just to sit in cold baths. Sounds pretty miserable. Nonetheless, I do think there was a kernel of something valuable there. In terms of longevity and so on, let's ask a clarifying question because this is important. What do we What are we really trying to accomplish? What is the outcome that you want? Because there's also, not to get too finetuned here, but there's lifespan, like at what age do you die? And then there's health span, meaning how mobile, how fast, how active, how cognitively How sharp do you want to be for how long? These are different things. Totally.

And different protocols.

They're different. For instance, we know that caloric restriction works for life extension.

But- What do you want to live a life?

Unfortunately, I'm not going to speak Let's just say as a male, I was going to say it might make your hair fall out. I don't have to worry about that. But hair falling out, plummeting testosterone, no libido. Is that the life you want to have? What do you rather have?

70 good years where you eat well than 90 in a restricted state.

Yeah. Also, which is why I do not think... I'll give you two opposing perspectives in a sense.

Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. And now for some more Money Rehab.

I'll give you two opposing perspectives in a sense. So the first is, I told you I have a low-cost, low-burn lifestyle, generally. The one place where I do spend a lot of money is with very good concierge doctors. So If you're going to make money for something, I think the highest leverage use of money is probably personal trainers, which I do not currently use, but I use coaches for various sports. And then it would be really good doctors who have great access for you and your family to specialists, have access to the latest research, who can move mountains to make things happen quickly, who know how to do really high in diagnostics. That's where you spend money. Most of the ingredients that a doctor who's very good, in my opinion, who's looking at the full spectrum of inputs, Peter Thia Wood, it's not just Which problems do you have? Which pills can I prescribe? It's the diet, the exercise, et cetera. Those don't need to cost a lot. And exercise, look, you can get a gym membership for what? $20 to $100 a month?

And if you're not exercising yet, you don't even need the gym.

And you don't even need that. You don't even need that. You get one kettlebell. You can have an amazing gym. My gym for many years, even though I could afford to do the fancy stuff, was a few kettlebells in my garage. That's it. And I was in incredible shape. I was in such shape than I am now. And that's it. The other place I would spend money is on quality food. Not everybody can. But if you can avoid pesticides to the extent possible, that's a good investment. Look up the Dirty Dozen, for instance. There's a list of vegetables called The Dirty Dozen, then Clean 15, or something like that. I put this all in the four-hour body, not trying to sell that book, but a lot of it holds up. That came out in 2010, and it highlighted a lot that has since become mainstream: cold exposure, glucose monitors, continuous glucose monitors. I remember that that book was a little fringe, almost, at the time, and now it's all the stuff we've all been doing. Yeah, it's all mainstream now, a lot of it. If you look at these vegetables, those will basically indicate, in the case of The Dirty Dozen, the fruits and vegetables that are most typically covered with pesticides and other types of industrial chemicals.

And you just avoid those or maybe choose organic for those if you're going to consume them. And then the Clean 15, those that are generally going to have the lowest load of pesticides and so on. You do not need to be a millionaire to do that. I was doing that when I was making 50 grand a year. You can pick and choose. Do what you can. It doesn't need to be perfect. It's like the meditating. Can't do an hour a day? Fine. Can you do 30 seconds a day? Great. Maybe if one thing you like, raspberries or blackberries, I'm making these up. But berries often get a lot of spray. Yeah. Okay. Maybe just for the berries, you pay the extra $2 for the organic. If that's an assurance that there are low pesticides. It may not be. Yeah. Is it? Is it? It gets a little tricky, but I'm saying, do what you can, right? Okay, fair. And that's it. So I really think a lot about minimizing chemicals, heavy metals. I very rarely eat tuna, for instance. Any bio-accumulator, like larger animals that Because they eat the smaller fish, so it has what?

More mercury?

More mercury and other things. Might have other heavy metals, things like arsenic. So that's easy.

Not eating tuna is pretty easy.

Yeah, not eating tuna. Yeah, it's pretty easy. So they're Little things like that. Or for instance, in the case, this is going to be out of reach for a lot of folks. But if you're going to eat, say, red meat, which I do, try to get, we can leave the ethics aside, but just try to get the most nutrient dense clean meat you can. And maybe that means you hunt once a year, like I do. But seriously, maybe that means you hunt once a year, and that's a few months of meat. And then you trade with people to get other things, like I do also.

You do that? You trade the meat that you hunt? Yeah.

I don't sell it. That's illegal. But if I have a friend who's got a moose, I got an elk. And then I have a friend who's got a million pounds of tomatoes, and I can't even look at another tomato. And then I have another friend who does like a salmon fishing trip once a year, and he's like, I can't have another salmon sandwich. Great. Then you can mix and match. And that is something very poor people do all over the place. It is hunt, right? So if you're like, Well, I can't afford it All Foods. Fine. Okay. There are options. I'm not saying that you're going to love all the options, but there are options.

The OG biohacker is saying, Diet, exercise, eat clean. Skip the tuna. Don't make it too complicated. Don't keep adding in.

And every once in a while, am I going to have a poke bowl with tuna? Sure, fine. Every once in a while.

Skip the tuna, mostly.

Yeah. I'm just saying that it's very easy to believe. I've spent a lot of money testing all sorts of things. It's very easy to believe, especially if you're on social media, where half of the influencers are trying to sell you something because they get a kickback or they get a sponsorship payment or they have some rev share, whatever it might You need to go to this clinic to get peptides, to get stem cells, to get this, that, or the other thing. And you go to the website and you're like, Oh, my God, this is $20,000. There's a lot of bullshit out there. And There are also some good things out there, but we live in a capitalist society. I'm a capitalist. I think there's a lot to be said for market-driven solutions. It's not a perfect system. Lots of issues, too. But you're dealing with social media platforms that want to make money. People are attracted to those also sometimes because they want to make money. So you just need to know that you're swimming in those waters. So when you go online, you might find various biohackers, and they're almost all selling stuff. What does that mean?

It means that to emulate them is going to be, surprise, surprise, expensive. But for instance, very hard to sell fasting. Who's going to profit from fasting?

Tim's getting rich off of telling you not to eat food.

I'm getting rich off of telling people to stop eating for a few days.

You have a knack for giving out tips that make you no money.

Oh, none whatsoever. That's a big thing. If I wanted to make, I could have made- Products. I could have made probably, and I don't think this is an exaggeration, probably $100 million for now. If I had launched a supplement company with the 4-hour Body, I did not want people to question my credibility or my motives. So my currency is credibility. Yes. That is the story I tell myself, that it is more valuable than the cash.

I think that's right. And another thing, it's pernicious out there because you've got influencers who might be trying to sell you something, and even when they're not trying to sell you something explicitly, they're benefiting from making more outrageous statements than not because it's an attention economy, too. And they're getting clicks, and people are like, Oh, what? Really? Oh, my God. I need rapid my son, or I'm going to die. I have to click here and learn I'm not even talking about it. You never did that either. You refuse to traffic in outrage or sensationalism.

No. Yeah, I don't do that. That is where it is most expensive for me.

Yeah, because the game you're playing is to be credible, to be a reliable source of information.

Which means, for instance, I try not to do it. Sometimes it slips through because I have multiple people working on stuff. But the click bait headlines for videos and so on, I really try not to do that. I get severely penalized for that. I I want to just clarify one thing, too, that not everyone on social media who is selling something or getting a rev share is doing that in bad faith. Everybody's got to make a living. And all Also, there are people who really believe in whatever they happen to be recommending. Look, I think disclosure is important. I have the Way app with Henry Shuckman. I'm an investor. I invested super early when they basically had nothing because I had him as a podcast guest, and I was like, This guy knows what he's doing. And one of my friends' lives was totally transformed, Kevin Rose, by Henry, and I was like, Okay, sure. But I'm disclosing it. So the disclosure is super important. And there are some really fascinating things out there. So just because someone is selling something or recommending something they get a rev share on does not mean that you shouldn't pay attention, but you should be aware that you might be asking a barber if you need a haircut.

Totally. In which case the answer is going to be yes. There are some drugs that I think are interesting, but I'm not at a point where I would... Rappamycin.

Okay, you do. You think it's interesting?

I do think Rappamycin is very interesting. It's an immunosuppressant. It's used in organ transplants. You have to be very careful with something like this. But Peter Tia talks much more credibly about Rappamycin. So I would listen to something that he's put out related to Rappamycin. And I remember interviewing a number of experts on a trip to Easter Island, actually, and we talked about rapamycin. This was probably close to 10 years ago. Wow. 8 to 10 years ago.

That was way ahead of when it entered into the mainstream.

It was super, super early. And that's because rapamycin was first isolated and identified on Easter Island, even though it occurs in many other places. The native name for Easter Island is rapinewi, which is why rapamycin is called rapamycin. So to come back to your question, let me lay out just a couple of things that are critical for me. I think the meditation of some type. Archery, I think, is meditation for me as well. But I don't want to split too many hairs here. Weight training, non-negotiable. As you get older, cardio is not enough for men and women. I would say especially women with the risks of osteoporosis and so on, and sarcopenia, which is age-related muscle loss. If you don't want to fall and break a hip and then die a handful of years later, which is very often what happens, you need to have muscular strength. The most reliable way to do that, perhaps the only way to reliably do that in modern society, is to do resistance training. If you are a woman listening to this, you are not going to become super bulky and look like It's like you wish you could be professional bodybuilder.

It ain't going to happen overnight, certainly. So strength train. And at least most of the guys I know, they're attracted to strong women. It doesn't mean CrossFit Games champion, but strong women, dancers. But women, I would say, and I don't know the exact number, but it's something that they have one 20th to one 10th of the circulating testosterone of men. Men have trouble putting on muscle. A A lot of men want to put on muscle, and they have a hard time. So don't worry about getting bulky, but do focus on getting strong. The way to do that, keep it simple. Once or twice a week, very slow cadence weight training. What does that mean? That just means Five to 10 seconds up, five to 10 seconds back until you have muscular failure, where you can't get any further, push for another five seconds. You're done with that exercise. Hit all your major muscle groups. It should only take about a half hour, maybe less. Do that once or twice a week. You're done. That's it. You're done. Then there are other things, like the aerobic training zone, too, stuff like that. Also doesn't need to be expensive.

Get a bicycle. Getting a bicycle. Run up a hill. Yeah, totally. Do kettlebell swings. There are a million ways to do it. The expense is not an excuse. And by the way, if you're like, I can't afford a kettlebell, there's something called the T-bar kettlebell. You can go to a plumbing store and buy materials for 5 to $10 where you can make own adjustable weight kettlebell. Then you do need plates, but the plates are like a dollar a pound, so fine. If you want purely bodyweight stuff that is really effective, gymnastics strength training, GST with a guy named Chris Summer, who's the former Coach for the men's national team in the US, no weights required.

Have you done gymnastics?

I have done gymnastics strength training. I'm not really built for gymnastics, just too many fractures and wrist issues and stuff. But you can get in tremendous shape without weights at all. It's still resistance training. You're just using body weight and different ways to approach that. So this is just a long way of saying that you don't need to spend what a lot of these folks online pride themselves on, which is, I spend $200,000 a year. I spend a million dollars a year on this and this. You don't need to do that. Let them do that. They might find something interesting.

And give you information, hopefully for free.

Yeah, great. Yeah, fantastic. Fantastic.

Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoy. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some Money Rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your moneyquestions, moneyrehab@moneynewsnetwork. Com, to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at Money News and TikTok at Money Network for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.

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