0:00:04 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of
0:00:08 The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease
0:00:14 out how they do what they do, the routines, the belief structures, the training programs that you
0:00:17 can apply to your own life. And I say training programs because my guest today is one of the
0:00:25 best teachers and trainers I have found in the last several years in any discipline whatsoever.
0:00:31 His name is Jake Kaminsky. Jake Kaminsky is a two-time Olympic silver medalist in archery and a
0:00:35 longtime member of the U.S. archery team with more than a decade of international competition
0:00:44 experience. He is very well known for his technical precision. He is meticulous with gear and tuning,
0:00:49 also with biomechanics, his deep knowledge of the sport. And with all of that, Jake helped lead the
0:00:57 U.S. to team silver medals at both the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Olympic Games. Since retiring from
0:01:01 Olympic competition, Jake has become a leading voice in the archery world through content creation,
0:01:07 product innovation, and educational events. He runs a successful YouTube channel, which is kind of the
0:01:13 de facto archery technical channel. People from all over the world have seen this over and over again. He is
0:01:21 like the Taylor Swift meets, you name it, Brad Pitt of the archery world when I’ve gone to events with him
0:01:27 because he was my coach and is my coach in archery. I had my first competition end of January. We’ll talk
0:01:33 about that. So he, in addition to that, writes training guides and develops high-performance gear,
0:01:40 which he manufactures in Austria. It is as precise as you expect Jake Kaminsky to be
0:01:48 under the Kaminsky Archery brand. You can find him on YouTube, Jake Kaminsky at Jake Kaminsky Archery.
0:01:56 Kaminsky is K-A-M-I-N-S-K-I. Website, jakekaminsky.com. And on Instagram and Facebook,
0:02:01 Jake underscore Kaminsky on Instagram. Facebook, Kaminsky Jake. We’ll link to all that stuff,
0:02:06 but really the big two are the YouTube channel, Jake Kaminsky Archery, and then the website,
0:02:14 jakekaminsky.com. And we go all over the place in this conversation is really a close examination
0:02:21 of real world learning because he and I had to work around and towards all sorts of things together.
0:02:29 I’ll explain how I chose him, how I found him and much more in just a second after a few words from
0:02:34 the people who make this podcast possible. Not to be a salty old dog, but then again,
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0:06:06 Optimal, minimal.
0:06:11 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
0:06:13 Can I ask you a personal question?
0:06:15 Now would it seem like a perfect time?
0:06:17 What if I did the opposite?
0:06:20 I’m a cybernetic organism living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
0:06:24 Me, Tim, Ferris, so.
0:06:30 Jake Kaminsky.
0:06:32 Nice to see you, man.
0:06:33 Yeah, nice to see you, too.
0:06:38 So glad to be doing this. We’ve had, I was joking before we recorded, that we could just
0:06:42 treat this like conversation 678, something like that. We’ve had a lot of conversations.
0:06:43 Might be double that.
0:06:46 It might be double that. It’s probably double that. If we count texts and the many, many
0:06:51 thousands and then videos, it just goes on and on. So let’s give people some context.
0:06:57 We’re going to do a deep dive into the world of archery. We’re going to do a deep dive into
0:07:02 the world of high performance, which transcends archery. So if you think to yourself,
0:07:06 archery, man, I’m not interested in flinging arrows, still listen, there’s going to be a lot
0:07:13 here. And we’re also going to talk about your coaching and our experience, coach and student,
0:07:20 and what we did with that, which I think is pretty special and fun to unpack. So we’re going to go in a
0:07:26 lot of different rabbit holes, but let’s start for people who are not familiar with Olympic
0:07:31 recurve. What does that mean? What is the sport?
0:07:38 Sure. So the sport of Olympic archery, as I grew up, it was just called recurve because that was the
0:07:42 discipline, but now it’s known as Olympic archery because there’s many different disciplines that have
0:07:49 spun off from that kind of bow. But essentially what it is, is a sport of hyper precision. It’s just how
0:07:54 good can you work with a machine, your bow to produce the exact same result every single time
0:08:00 at an extreme distance. So when I grew up, we shot up to a hundred yards, which is easy to see. It’s
0:08:05 end zone to end zone on a football field. But now the Olympic distance is 70 meters or 77 yards
0:08:10 or 237 feet. So that’s, you know, about three quarters of the way down the football field.
0:08:17 So we’re shooting an arrow that distance, the arrow reaches 12 to 13 feet in the air in an arcing
0:08:23 trajectory to the target. No magnification, zero magnification, no rear sight, in fact. So you don’t
0:08:28 even have something to align up in the back other than a string. You’re using a blurry string that is
0:08:34 very imprecise in your reference. And for people who are trying to get an idea of what it means to
0:08:43 perform at a very high level, the center of the target. How large is that? And what does that mean
0:08:51 for the amount of motion that is permissible at the arrow point? The 10 ring, the maximum scoring
0:08:57 ring is a 12.2 centimeters or about the size of a CD. You have to not only take into consideration
0:09:03 your alignment with that arrow and that bow, but also you have wind. So there’s a lot of factors.
0:09:09 Or precipitation or yeah, anything, anything but lightning. And to hit that 10 ring, that 12.2
0:09:17 centimeter diameter ring, it is the margin of error to hit that repeatedly is the diameter of a extra
0:09:22 fine ball in an extra fine ballpoint pen. So just to put this in perspective, if you’re not watching the
0:09:28 video, you’ll still get it. But if you’re watching the video, all right. So you’re trying to hit a CD.
0:09:36 For those of you remember CDs, it would be like the type of dish you might have under a cup of coffee,
0:09:43 maybe something like that. It’s small. And then the amount of variance at the arrow tip
0:09:52 that will allow you to hit that consistently is smaller than the point of this pen, not the pen,
0:09:58 the diameter of the pen, the actual rolling point in a ballpoint. Correct. It’s insane. Correct. And now
0:10:03 how often or how many arrows do you have to do that for it? It’s because it’s not just one. It’s more
0:10:09 than that. We shoot for a ranking round to seat us in our brackets for the Olympic games. We shoot 72
0:10:16 arrows. Your average, like really high score, you’re hitting that 10 ring probably 40 plus times out of 72
0:10:22 times. Yeah. So it’s insane. That’s the level. I’ll give one more bit of trivia that I did not know
0:10:29 until we were literally just walking down this hallway, which is that you have also hit the 10
0:10:36 ring from three quarters of a football field away while standing on an indo board. Yeah. For people
0:10:41 who don’t know what that is, it’s like a balance board. Imagine a skateboard deck that you could stand
0:10:47 on and there’s basically a huge rolling pin underneath it and you place it on the pin and
0:10:51 then you have to balance as you wobble. And if you see someone try this for the first time,
0:10:57 it’s disastrous and comical. And so to be able to stand on that and hit the 10 ring, you guys can put
0:11:06 the math together. It’s just, it is just an extra planetary accomplishment. It’s wild. So let’s back up
0:11:15 and share some context on how we first connected. So the world of archery is, I’m not going to say
0:11:22 it’s opaque because it’s not opaque, but it can be difficult to navigate. And when I was first trying
0:11:29 to find potential coaches, and I can come back to why I was doing that, I went where? I went online,
0:11:36 I went to YouTube. But one of the challenges, as most people recognize, is that let’s just say for
0:11:41 trick shooters, and there’s some amazing trick shooters, which is not to discount that as a
0:11:48 discipline, but people can take a thousand attempts and then show their best outcome.
0:11:53 And we were talking about this earlier, but when they actually go to retrieve their arrow,
0:11:54 look at the rest of the target face.
0:12:00 Not only retrieve their arrow, just look at the target in frame behind them. Oftentimes it’s like
0:12:03 there’s a burlap wrap over the target because people use bag targets. That’s what they’re
0:12:09 called. And you know how worn out they can get. Yours are nowhere near as worn out as 90 plus
0:12:14 percent of those trick shooters. And yeah, they show you that one impact, but look at the target
0:12:14 behind them.
0:12:19 And what I think what you’re alluding to is that if you’re hitting the center of the target
0:12:23 consistently, you’re basically going to carve out a sweet spot and then you have to replace
0:12:30 that portion of the target face if it’s replaceable. There’s a lot of, I suppose, selection and
0:12:35 highlights online and it can make it very, very difficult, particularly if you’re coming
0:12:39 in as a novice, you don’t know how to sort or separate fact from fiction. You don’t know
0:12:44 where to go. And so what I ended up doing was asking myself a question I ask a lot. And for
0:12:48 people who’ve read The 4-Hour Chef, which is actually about accelerated learning, this approach
0:12:54 will sound familiar, but this is a chance to see it unfold in recent history and sort of
0:13:01 in real time because we’re still training. How can I find an objective measure for this
0:13:08 sport, for this discipline? And there are almost always options. For instance, I’ve had Susan
0:13:16 Garrett on this podcast. She is a multiple-time agility champion. So dog agility champion. She’s
0:13:25 a multiple national-time champion. And that is an objective competition with set scoring, with set
0:13:33 penalties under time, and there’s nowhere to hide. So that is how I ended up having Susan Garrett on the
0:13:40 podcast versus a million celebrity dog coaches where it’s impossible to actually know what you’re
0:13:45 buying because you don’t have any of the outtakes. You don’t have a lot of objective measurement.
0:13:50 And in this case, I was like, all right, well, I think Archery’s in the Olympics. Let me look this
0:13:54 up. Oh, it’s in the Olympics. Great. Let me try to use that as a sorting mechanism. And that is how I
0:13:58 found your amazing YouTube channel. You want to give it a plug?
0:13:59 Yeah, it’s just Jake Kaminsky.
0:14:06 I mean, when we’ve gone anywhere related to archery, it’s like trying to move around with
0:14:14 The Rock or Lady Gaga or some combination of the two. You just get mobbed because in a world where
0:14:21 it can be very difficult to decipher what is legitimate, you offer the bona fides and a lot
0:14:25 of really good technical instructions. So that’s how I found you. Then reached out, and then lo and
0:14:30 behold, here we are. And it’s really worked out incredibly well. And my background, just
0:14:34 quickly, it’s not that extensive, but I’ve been bow hunting for at least 10 years, a bit more than
0:14:40 that. Did rifle prior to that. First hunt ever was with Steven Rinella during the writing of The
0:14:46 Four Hour Chef. So thanks to Steve Rinella. People can check him out. Everything Meat Eater. Also an
0:14:54 amazing writer. And I’ll give people a bit of a flash forward, and then we can talk about all sorts of
0:15:01 stuff, including your kind of training regimen for yourself and development and so on. But began taking
0:15:07 barebow archery. We can talk about what that is, but it’s effectively, for the purposes of this
0:15:13 conversation, it’s a competition classification. And it dictates that you basically strip off
0:15:19 all the stabilizers, the clicker, don’t worry about these things, the sight, et cetera, from an
0:15:20 Olympic bow.
0:15:21 Essentially, all the aids.
0:15:21 Yeah, all the aids.
0:15:22 Everything that makes it.
0:15:29 Yeah, you take off all of the performance aids, and then you shoot with that particular bow.
0:15:36 And I became interested in barebow for a few reasons. I saw it online on YouTube while I was
0:15:41 tooling around trying to find something, and there is something called Lancaster Classic.
0:15:43 Happens in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
0:15:44 Or Lancaster.
0:15:54 Lancaster, yes, exactly. And Lancaster Archery Supply is a huge distributor of archery products,
0:16:02 and they hold this competition once a year. And it is, for the barebow discipline, I suppose it’s the
0:16:03 largest in the world.
0:16:04 I think so. Yeah.
0:16:10 I mean, it’s at least the most prestigious, I suppose, has the biggest reach, so it gets the
0:16:16 most exposure, and I think actually the most participation now, at least as of this last
0:16:21 year. And a couple of years leading up to this, it’s taken off, and it is, I believe it’s almost
0:16:24 the biggest, if not the biggest class, as far as the amount of participation.
0:16:29 Yeah. So you’ve got barebow. They also have compound. They also have Olympic archeries,
0:16:30 Olympic recurve.
0:16:31 They have hunting.
0:16:33 They have longbow now.
0:16:33 Yep.
0:16:38 They’ve got all sorts of stuff. So many different classes. And barebow is interesting to me for a few
0:16:46 reasons. I have not done any real physical competition. Well, now I have, but in 20 years,
0:16:52 probably. Last thing was Tango in Argentina in 2004, I suppose it was, a long time ago.
0:16:58 And I wanted to compete. I love competing. But I thought to myself, all right, I want to take a bit
0:17:03 of an oblique approach here, which I think is a misunderstanding about what I do sometimes, or what
0:17:08 I often focus on, even as early as the four-hour workweek. The goal is not to find the cheap shortcut.
0:17:16 The goal is to look for oblique, maybe uncommon approaches to various problems or goals.
0:17:22 That’s it. And in this case, I looked at the number of people competing in barebow. And I was
0:17:29 like, all right, it’s a smaller population at the higher levels. And it is sometimes nicknamed
0:17:37 the struggle stick for folks. And part of the reason it has so much viewership online compared to some of
0:17:42 these other disciplines is, as they would say, like in barebow, anything can happen.
0:17:43 Literally at any moment.
0:17:49 At any moment. And if somebody lets their nerves take control, if there’s any number of issues,
0:17:57 they could really fire on the target, but out of the bullseye, let’s just say, by a substantial margin,
0:18:03 which opens up the possibility for comebacks, surprise turns, reversals of fortune, and it makes
0:18:11 it fun to watch. And I thought, okay, well, that seems like a fun place to bookmark as a possible
0:18:19 competition and ended up competing end of January. We will come back to that and had, I suppose,
0:18:26 about six months of real training, real focus training. And so we’ll come back to what that
0:18:34 looked like. But let’s talk about Jake. So how did the archery thing start? And why don’t you just
0:18:37 take that and run with it? And then I might pepper in questions along the way.
0:18:44 So I grew up in a very small town in Elman, New York, kind of south of Buffalo, New York. And my dad was a
0:18:50 volunteer fireman at the local fire department. And they have a spring and a fall gun raffle every year.
0:18:57 And, you know, they raffle off guns in a canoe full of beer or whatever else. Right. And one of them was
0:19:03 a bow and he won the bow gun raffle. And this was, I was five years old. And of course this was a, you
0:19:08 know, hunting bow for an adult. So there’s no way a five-year-old is going to use that. So we found,
0:19:14 I think we went to Kmart and bought a bear hunting compound for a kid, just fiberglass, super cheap,
0:19:19 very basic. My parents bought me that for my sixth birthday. So on my sixth birthday,
0:19:26 after we got hay bales from a local farmer or whatever, threw up a target. And I shot my first
0:19:32 arrow at 20 yards and 20 yards is more than double the distance that you would really want to have any
0:19:38 person, not just a kid shoot their first arrow. I vividly remember my very first arrow I ever shot
0:19:44 because I literally shot an inside out X on my very first arrow. You should explain what that is.
0:19:50 So inside out X, meaning if you have your 10 ring, like the maximum scoring ring inside,
0:19:55 the 10 ring is a X ring. It’s about the size. It’s like a, between a diamond and nickel about that
0:20:01 size and inside out, meaning I put the arrow in the dead center of the target where it did not touch
0:20:07 the ring of the X. So it was inside of a dime, roughly my very first arrow. We won’t talk about
0:20:11 the next several hundred arrows. I mean, thank God for that first arrow, right?
0:20:16 Yeah. I mean, I was hooked. I mean, it’s kind of crazy. I’ve heard this story to think
0:20:21 like if your first 20 arrows had been all over the place, would it have been a different story? Like
0:20:26 maybe, you know, maybe it’s crazy. Yeah. Who knows? Yeah. Really no way to know. And, uh,
0:20:30 I was with my brother, Matt, he was out there shooting with me. Yeah. I don’t know if he shot before
0:20:37 me, but after I shot the X, he’s like, give me that thing. And of course, yeah. And then it just
0:20:42 kind of started from there. We found that local club that was down the street. It’s a Joe ad club,
0:20:46 a junior Olympic archery development club. There’s many of those around the country and the U S they’re
0:20:52 at local hunting shops. Basically, if they have a junior development program, we found that club
0:20:55 because that’s where the bow was bought for the gun raffle. And luckily it was about a five minute
0:21:01 drive from our house. And so every Saturday mornings they had a junior development program.
0:21:06 And so I’d go there and start shooting with them. And so every Saturday morning I’d be there
0:21:12 no matter what, because I enjoyed it so much. The progression, it went from shooting compound.
0:21:17 So I shot compound for about six years. Let’s pause for a second. Just for people who have no
0:21:22 archery context. And by the way, my not too secret agenda for this is I want everybody to go out and
0:21:30 try archery. It has been such a godsend for me to have that constant for a million reasons turns into
0:21:35 a form of meditation. It can also be just as frustrating, if not more frustrating than golf,
0:21:42 but let’s put that aside for now. It has been such a gift to my life to have archery and to be able to
0:21:49 train with you. It’s really been tremendous. So I have this not so secret agenda of getting as many
0:21:55 people as possible who are listening to try archery, which by the way, is very much within reach for
0:21:59 basically everybody listening. If you have a smartphone and you’re listening to this, you can
0:22:04 try archery. You do not need to buy anything, but let me explain a term. So longbow is about the
0:22:09 simplest thing you can imagine. It’s a, let’s call it a stick. It’s bent. And then you have a string
0:22:16 attached to it. And you’ll see this in many different indigenous hunting cultures. You’ll see it all over
0:22:20 the world recurve. You will also see all over the world because they figured out, well, you can make
0:22:28 the bow a lot shorter and have the ends of the bow recurve out. That’s kind of towards the target
0:22:34 to apply more tension. It’s like a advanced longbow using laminations of wood instead of just a stick.
0:22:39 Right, exactly. So now you have this laminated bow and you see that all over the world,
0:22:45 all over the world. And there are different iterations of that. You’ve got the slightly
0:22:50 different idea, but horse bow, which I’m, of course I’m, I’m in love with. That’s a whole separate
0:22:57 podcast and so on and so forth. So if you imagine like a Robin hood bow in your mind, I think it was
0:23:05 a recurve in maybe the cartoon, at least made out of fancier materials, whether it’s carbon or aluminum
0:23:10 or something else. Then you have the idea of what I’m shooting when I’m doing say a bare bow.
0:23:18 And then a compound has various cams. You can think of them almost like cams on a weightlifting
0:23:18 machine.
0:23:19 Or like pulleys.
0:23:25 Yeah, pulleys, pulleys and cams. So it’s like when you are in a gym using a machine, pushing or pulling,
0:23:32 there’s a strength curve. So the amount of exertion required changes over the course of that full range.
0:23:37 And in the case of a compound bow, very similar. And what makes it such an efficient, amazing hunting
0:23:43 tool, there are a few factors. One is in the beginning, it’s hard, it’s hard, it’s hard. And then
0:23:50 there’s a let off. So you might have, I’m making up these numbers, but 60 pound draw weight. And then
0:23:51 you’re holding, what would you say?
0:23:53 Maybe between eight and 12 pounds.
0:23:54 Eight and 12 pounds.
0:23:56 Depending on if it’s a hunting or a competition.
0:24:02 Yeah, right. So eight or 12 pounds when you’re at anchor. And to define that, that’s when you have your
0:24:07 very simple terms. Your hand that is attached to the string, whether you’re using fingers or
0:24:13 a mechanical release, when your hand is kind of glued to your face and you always glue it to the
0:24:20 same place to set up the rifle barrel, so to speak. And that’s one element of what makes compounds so
0:24:26 interesting. The second is when you have these additional mechanical aids, let’s just say,
0:24:31 the speed of the arrow is just dramatically, dramatically, dramatically more.
0:24:37 The main difference in the compound versus everything else is there’s one string on every
0:24:42 other bow called a single string bow, whether that be a trad bow, a stick bow, a traditional bow,
0:24:48 a recurve, a bare bow, whatever that is. Whereas compound has three strings, essentially. When you
0:24:53 look at it, you can see multiple strings because the string tension, as you pull it back, it builds,
0:24:57 but then it transfers that tension into the cables, which are the other two strings that
0:25:01 the arrow is not attached to. And so that then catapults the arrow at an incredible rate of speed
0:25:02 when you let it go.
0:25:08 Yeah. And when you go to your local range, which we’ll get to, and I recommend, you can try all of
0:25:12 these different options in a lot of places. And if you can only start with compound, great.
0:25:13 Absolutely. That’s where I started.
0:25:14 Maybe you stay with compound.
0:25:14 Yeah.
0:25:19 And at the highest levels, they do some absurd, absurd things.
0:25:19 Yeah.
0:25:24 Actually, I just have to give credit where credit is due. So also have had some fantastic conversations
0:25:31 with Joel Turner, shot IQ, his son, Bodie. Do you want to just explain what he’s capable of doing?
0:25:37 Sure. So, you know, that X that I shot the inside out on my first arrow. So he will shoot that X.
0:25:47 So that same hitting that dime for about 120 arrows in a row, essentially under pressure when there’s
0:25:53 $100,000 plus on the line. And you would not know just looking at the kid, he is just stone cold,
0:25:58 ice in his veins. You’d have no idea that he even had a heartbeat just watching him shoot because
0:26:05 he’s incredible to be able to hit that thing repeatedly with so much precision and repeatability
0:26:10 under pressure. Most importantly, it’s just, it’s ridiculous. We’ll get to talking about a little bit
0:26:15 about compound and how there’s a, I guess, a less deep learning curve. You get really good,
0:26:20 really fast as far as precision, but still to win with a compound in a competition,
0:26:24 it still requires immense amounts of effort and energy and training.
0:26:29 So we’re going to come back to your trajectory in a second, pun intended, but let’s mention that
0:26:36 briefly because I didn’t really fill in the gaps. The compound bow that I used for hunting
0:26:41 was fantastic. I thought it was a great transition for me because I was more familiar with rifle and
0:26:47 so on. It was actually a fantastic transition and I would hunt once a year. Let’s just call it something
0:26:56 like that. Use everything, eat everything for those people wondering. And the hop from rifle
0:27:04 and so on to compound was actually quite easy. I needed to brush up on a few things, obviously learn
0:27:10 some technical details, think about back tension a bit, etc. But for someone with a sports background,
0:27:17 it was pretty straightforward. And if you’re thinking about the target size, right, the kind
0:27:24 of kill zone on whether it’s a deer or an elk, I mean, certainly a lot larger on an elk, but you can get
0:27:31 to a point if you have some kinesthetic awareness very quickly, I would say within a week for a lot
0:27:37 of folks, maybe. Yeah. So to be like ethical as a hunter to, you know, know that when you take the
0:27:43 shot, you’re not going to do the animal any suffering. It will be a very, very painless and fast end.
0:27:45 Yeah. It takes more time to get to that point.
0:27:50 Well, depends. It depends on the distance that you’re shooting. So say, we’ll say 20 yards.
0:27:53 So what I was going to say is 20 yards, just as people can imagine.
0:27:58 So 20 yards, your average person, I could get them to hit that pie plate. It depends on the coach,
0:28:03 of course, and depends on explanations and the individual person as well. But I would say
0:28:08 easily within a week, you’re going to hit that thing nine to 10 times out of 10 every time within
0:28:14 a day, you’ll hit it probably six to eight times out of 10 because it’s just easy, relatively speaking,
0:28:18 to get to that level. Yeah. And there are a lot of reasons for that, right? I mean,
0:28:23 you have the let off, you have the peep, which is a rear sight, which is basically a rear sight.
0:28:28 It’s a tiny circle affixed to the string itself. You have a level on the bow.
0:28:32 You have a level. There are many things that allow you to do that quickly, but then to
0:28:35 get to the highest levels, we were talking about this at lunch. It’s kind of like, okay,
0:28:42 let’s get you down the hill on a snowboard. Yeah. Within a week, we can probably get you
0:28:46 down some easy terrain on a snowboard. Okay. Now you want to compete in the X games. Yeah.
0:28:50 All right. Well, good luck. That’s going to take about 10 years, right? I mean, that’s a rule for
0:28:54 a reason. Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s Bodhi and anyone who performs at that level.
0:28:59 Absolutely. So not to take it away from them, like their proficiency level is insane. And to be able
0:29:04 to do it all the time under pressure is even more insane. You know, it’s one thing to do it in your
0:29:10 backyard, right. And be that backyard world champion that so many people claim to be right. But to do it
0:29:15 in front of other people on a stage with crazy lighting, cheering crowds, money on the line,
0:29:20 potentially putting food on your table or not at the end of the day too, that’s just a whole lot
0:29:24 of added pressure. And so it’s different. We’ll probably end up talking about Korea later. And
0:29:28 maybe we can just give a sneak peek. I know we’re going all over the place, but I remember you said
0:29:33 to me at one point, and please correct me if I’m getting this wrong. If each country could field as
0:29:38 many athletes as they wanted for a given sport, that Korea would probably place one to a hundred.
0:29:41 At minimum, bare minimum.
0:29:47 Yeah. It’s basically their, let’s just call it basketball, football, baseball, all wrapped into
0:29:47 one.
0:29:49 Yeah. It is their national sport.
0:29:57 I mean, they are obscenely, obscenely good. And you said to me before, if you or I were scouted and
0:30:01 assessed early on, we wouldn’t have made the early cuts.
0:30:03 No, you would have immediately.
0:30:03 Because I’m cross-eyed.
0:30:05 Because of your eye dominance.
0:30:09 Yeah, I’m right-handed, but my left eye is my aiming eye. So I would have been gone.
0:30:11 And I get a little bit too excited.
0:30:11 Yeah.
0:30:12 So I would have also been-
0:30:13 You’d have been cut.
0:30:13 A hundred percent.
0:30:22 So what are some maybe good decisions or habits that you made early on, let’s just say before
0:30:28 you ended up in San Diego, that you think helped you to perform the way you performed in those
0:30:33 early stages? I think I can think of one example, but I’ll hold it for now, which is where you’re
0:30:36 placing yourself in the gym and how you’re training.
0:30:44 I would say for me, one of the biggest advantages as a human, not just as an archer, but as a human
0:30:49 was the same kind of thing that you saw was a meditative escape, right? Because when you’re
0:30:53 shooting archery, that’s the only thing you can focus on. Because if you’re thinking about anything
0:30:55 else, your scores go down, your groups open up.
0:30:58 Yeah. You know if you’re meditating poorly, very quickly.
0:31:05 A hundred percent. So I think for me, that gave me a place to kind of go to. Like I escaped to
0:31:12 archery. So I feel like that was definitely a big factor as to what led to that. Just it naturally
0:31:18 worked for me. It wasn’t difficult for me. It is hard. It’s hard to stay focused on something so
0:31:25 simple and repetitive over and over again, but it was very enjoyable because it’s just me,
0:31:31 the bow and the arrow. I love competing as well. I used to play baseball when I was a kid and that
0:31:37 competed with my archery time because I was trying out for the state team in baseball or about to and
0:31:41 winning nationals shooting archery. So it’s like kind of had an easy decision there to make because
0:31:48 I was already winning nationals in archery. So I went with that, but the overall just enjoyment of
0:31:53 shooting archery and enjoying that me and the bow and no one else is going to prevent me from beating
0:31:58 someone else. It’s not like they’re interfering with me or trying to prevent me from shooting my
0:32:04 arrow. It’s very nice. And it’s also a hundred percent objective. There is no subjectivity. There’s
0:32:11 no way for anyone to influence the outcome other than maybe at some weird position, a judge to make a
0:32:16 bad call, but it’s almost never happening. It just doesn’t happen because it’s such a small community
0:32:21 and everybody holds each other accountable, which is also another amazing thing about the community of
0:32:26 archery. So I think that was a big factor there as far as, you know, what you’re alluding to and
0:32:31 bringing up and saying is I choose to make things as difficult as possible when I’m practicing.
0:32:37 Like say if I’m out at a range, I’ll choose the lane nearest the wall. So I have the least amount of
0:32:43 space. And we’ll probably get into why we do that in a little bit here, but I would suggest you to do
0:32:47 the same thing as we were working together. And you at first were like, why, why would I do that?
0:32:52 It’s much better to just stand by myself out in the open and have no influence. Well, it’s because when
0:32:57 you’re shooting on a line in a tournament, you have 24 inches of space roughly for yourself. And you’re,
0:33:02 the next guy’s 24 inches, then the next guy. And so you’re stacked in there like a can of sardines.
0:33:06 Yeah. We get a photo of me at Lancaster for people who want to see what it looks like.
0:33:11 Yeah. It’s like, it’s like a Tokyo subway car. Oh, you just happen to all be holding bows with
0:33:17 arrows. Yes. It’s very crowded. It is. It is. It is. So anything you can do to make things more
0:33:24 difficult to shoot in the rain, to shoot in the wind, to shoot in the heat, I would do because I
0:33:28 don’t know, maybe I just enjoy torturing myself. I don’t know, but I found it to be really important.
0:33:33 And once I got to the training center, listening to some of the other successful athletes,
0:33:38 giving talks at the training center about their success and how things went and what made them
0:33:44 successful, a lot of them was leaning into the same kind of thing, training hard to make competition
0:33:50 easy. Yeah. Well, it’s very much an echo of the more you sweat in training, less you bleed in combat.
0:33:51 Sure. Absolutely.
0:33:57 Like you, you want to try to make your training harder if possible than your competition. There’s
0:34:00 there are limits to what you can do sometimes. Sure. We’ll talk about that.
0:34:05 But even still like the range I grew up on, I would go there more than just Saturdays and I’d shoot there
0:34:11 by myself because no one else is there and I’m just shooting. And my coach slash mentor at the time,
0:34:17 Harry Stabell would come downstairs because it was down in like a secondary level below and he’d have a
0:34:22 metal ashtray back then everybody smoked and he would just throw it randomly on the concrete ground.
0:34:28 When I’m at full draw and I have to regain composure and shoot a shot. Right. So there’s all sorts of
0:34:32 weird stuff that happened all the time. Mr. Yagi. Yeah. Action going on.
0:34:38 There’s a lot of stuff that happened that definitely would not fly in today’s day and age. So it’s like,
0:34:42 oh, you’re dropping your bow arm. That’s like a thing that when you shoot the shot, you have to
0:34:47 maintain the bow up. You don’t want to drop the arm. So he’d take his pocket knife out, flip it open,
0:34:53 turn it upside and say, don’t drop your arm. Put it under your arm. Under my arm. Or you’re grabbing
0:34:58 your bow. Something else you don’t want to do is hold on to it. There’s a grip on a bow, but you don’t
0:35:03 want to grip it. You just saddle it. Right. And you’re kind of pushing into it. Correct. And so you’re
0:35:07 grabbing your bow. Guess what? Thumbtacks were double-sided taped on the front of my bow. Didn’t
0:35:13 grab it anymore. That’s so intense. Yeah. And it worked. I mean, look, I’m not recommending people
0:35:19 do that with their kids, but the also supplement to our conversation, we’re going to put a number of
0:35:26 videos up on my YouTube page and we’ll link to Jake’s YouTube page with Archery 101, both Archery
0:35:32 Gear 101, just laying out the anatomy of a bow and then Technical 101. So you have a couple of
0:35:38 pointers, which you may not get at some ranges so that when you have your first, second and
0:35:43 subsequent lessons, you’ll have some really good solid fundamentals at least to use.
0:35:51 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we’ll be right back to the show.
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0:37:04 All right. So you mentioned Thumbtack Billy. I forgot his name, Harry, right?
0:37:14 And if I’m skipping any important chapters, let me know. But I want to know when KSL entered your life
0:37:20 and who or what is KSL. Sure. So quickly, before we get into KSL, I started shooting compound.
0:37:21 Yep.
0:37:28 Easier sport to get into. Shot that for six years. And then some other of the friends that I developed at
0:37:32 the archery range that I was going to were going to the Empire State Games. It’s like a mini Olympics,
0:37:37 and it’s for all of the regions of within New York State. And they compete against each other,
0:37:41 different events. You go to a place, there’s opening ceremonies, closing ceremonies.
0:37:42 They have this for a bunch of sports.
0:37:48 It’s amazing. I wanted to do the archery thing, but compound wasn’t in it. Only recurve. And I had
0:37:53 really debilitating target panic, basically dealing with aiming in the middle and the irrational fear
0:37:56 to aim in the middle with the intention of shooting the shot.
0:37:57 Which is quite common.
0:38:02 It’s a common thing. So I wanted to shoot recurve because it’s a change, something different. Archery
0:38:06 was starting to become unfun for the compound side of things because of that target panic.
0:38:11 So I picked up the recurve and it has a device called a clicker, which is essentially a psycho
0:38:17 trigger that is both a draw check to make sure your draw length, the distance you pull the bow back
0:38:21 is the same every single time, but it also gives you a cue to tell you when to let go. So it allowed
0:38:27 me to aim in the middle with more comfort to disassociate from that fear of letting go.
0:38:32 Yeah. So let me give people a visual that might help you imagine what a clicker is. It’s a flat
0:38:38 piece of metal that goes on the outside of the arrow. I actually used one for the first time today and
0:38:43 holy God, is it challenging to figure out. But if you were to imagine, let’s say you’re using a
0:38:47 slingshot. Most people know a slingshot, but let’s say instead of shooting a ball bearing, you’re
0:38:56 shooting an arrow out of this slingshot. And there’s a piece of metal that is leaning against
0:39:03 the arrow as you pull it back in the slingshot. Once it flips past the very front of that arrow
0:39:07 point, this is not the perfect analogy, but it works and clicks onto another piece of metal.
0:39:12 That’s when you let go, whether you think you’re ready or not. And what that’s going to do is
0:39:18 standardize how much you pull it back. And it also takes away the decision to let go.
0:39:19 Yes, exactly.
0:39:22 It’s just a Pavlovian response that you train in yourself.
0:39:24 Yes and no.
0:39:25 I mean, it’s more complicated.
0:39:29 Yes, yes. But that is a brief look at it. So I switched to recurve specifically because of target
0:39:35 panic and to go to the Empire State Games. So I literally took a bow off the wall. I still have
0:39:42 the bow that was a club bow and took my stuff from my compound, my arrows and all sorts of other things
0:39:46 and threw it on the bow and started shooting it for a few months before Empire State Games made the
0:39:50 team. I think I won some medals there. I don’t remember exactly, but it was a lot of fun. Good
0:39:55 time, very good experience and ultimately fell in love with archery again because it was enjoyable
0:40:01 again. So there was no target panic involved and just continued to do that. Shot up through the
0:40:07 ranks, started winning nationals as a junior. And then at a tournament called the, well,
0:40:14 actually it was junior world championships at US target nationals. I was shooting against some other
0:40:18 people that had just moved to the training center to work with KSL, who we’ll get to in a second.
0:40:25 And I was the only person to beat the person who was working with KSL. And he came up to me after the
0:40:31 match and said, Hey, you’re pretty good. And I’d like you to come out to the training center and work
0:40:35 with the junior dream team. It was a squad at the time that would go out there maybe once a quarter.
0:40:40 And I said, actually, I just applied to become an RA, a resident athlete. I’d like to move out there
0:40:45 full-time in a couple months. And he said, great, I’ll keep an eye out for your application and keep
0:40:54 it up. And he disappeared. And so KSL is Kisik Lee, my coach, and he is the godfather of archery in Korea.
0:40:58 He essentially left Korea and went to Australia for a few years.
0:40:59 What did he do in Korea?
0:41:04 Oh, he was the national head coach of the Korean archery team and formulated the entire
0:41:11 program that is the current Korean archery training regiment to develop archers.
0:41:17 And to put it as a quick example as to the type of celebrity level that he is,
0:41:23 anytime we would fly to Korea, a limo would show up. He didn’t order it, but the limo would show up.
0:41:27 We flew there for a tournament and a limo showed up and he said, can’t fit the team in the limo.
0:41:33 No, thanks. And I’m at a tournament in Puerto Rico. We’re in a sauna, me and another archer with some
0:41:39 other random Korean. He looked Korean and he ended up being from Korea. And he said, oh, why are you guys
0:41:44 here? We’re here shooting archery. Oh, did you know archery is a national sport in Korea? Yeah,
0:41:50 we do actually. And our coach is actually Korean is Kisik Lee. Kisik Lee. Oh my God. Do you have any
0:41:57 idea like the level of celebrity and how important he is to the country? Like culturally, just random
0:42:03 sauna in Puerto Rico, you know, I don’t know. So that kind of level. And so he left Korea,
0:42:10 went to Australia, worked with them to develop a national program. I think before he was working with
0:42:18 them officially, he went to biomechanics school to try to apply more efficient movements to his method.
0:42:24 And he also, prior to that, to jump backwards, part of the development of the Korean national program
0:42:29 was looking at the US program back in the eighties. We were dominant worldwide and hadn’t lost a world
0:42:35 championship for decades and were just powerhouses on the international scale. And so he mimicked the
0:42:39 program that we were doing, or at least the movements, positions, that kind of thing, and
0:42:43 implemented that in Korea as a national system that would start from grassroots from day one,
0:42:47 no matter what. And then that’s why we would be thrown out because we didn’t fit the mold.
0:42:55 That’s how strict they are. So he went to Australia, made a better program, and then ultimately ended up
0:43:02 coming to the States. And so he just got hired in 2006 in like January. So just before junior world
0:43:06 championships, I moved out to the training center and started training under Coach Lee in 2006.
0:43:12 Okay. So we’re going to pick up there in a minute, but I want to just pause because you’re already doing
0:43:18 very, very well. So you mentioned a few things that influenced that, right? You found it appealing,
0:43:28 easy to use archery as maybe an escape, right? A meditation. You made training as difficult as possible.
0:43:35 Do any other things come to mind that were decisions you made or things you did differently
0:43:39 that you think contributed to those successes prior to moving out to the training center?
0:43:45 One of those things, honestly, was I did not really mesh well socially with other kids.
0:43:52 And so I didn’t really have a ton of friends. It was a very odd situation. Definitely a lot of it is
0:43:56 I’m an intense person as it is. And so I take things very seriously.
0:44:00 His wife is laughing from around the concrete pillar.
0:44:07 Yes. So, yeah. So I take things, yeah, very seriously. And as a kid that can make things
0:44:14 difficult, even though talented in sports, baseball, just any throwing sport really,
0:44:19 and archery and just didn’t fit in in school. So I basically built a shell around myself,
0:44:23 didn’t talk to anyone in school. I didn’t because I got made fun of and got a, you know,
0:44:30 just overall not attacked because it wasn’t physical really. It just wasn’t something I was interested.
0:44:35 I wasn’t wanting to participate in social life. So I just made a shell around myself and stayed inside
0:44:41 of that in school. And at archery, I didn’t have that identity, right? I was a kid.
0:44:44 Everybody’s like kind of shooting and doing their own thing.
0:44:49 Yeah. Everybody’s doing their own thing. Everybody’s as interesting and different and awkward and normal
0:44:57 and talented and just human, right? And so I didn’t have that aura of that negative experience of school
0:45:03 following me around. So it supercharged my desire to want to do it more because it was just,
0:45:09 I was normal. People treated me like a normal human, a normal kid with respect. It was great, right?
0:45:17 So that was ultimately my life. I think that really is what supercharged my desire to want to do it more
0:45:20 because it was something that I felt happy doing.
0:45:28 Yeah, totally. And I want to, this is as good a point as any, to say that part of what got me excited
0:45:36 about archery was realizing how welcoming the communities are. And there are different personalities,
0:45:40 right? It’s like compound crew is different from the Olympic crew, which is different from the bear
0:45:46 boat crew, which is very different from the horse boat crew. They’re all like different burning man camps
0:45:52 with super different personalities, but broadly speaking, incredibly welcoming. People are happy to give you
0:45:59 advice, give you pointers, help you out. And I mean this in the best way possible. It’s also kind of
0:46:05 like weirdo palooza. I mean, it’s like, and it doesn’t matter, right? It’s like, okay, like there’s
0:46:09 some dude in a kilt. Okay, whatever. And then there’s like some normal emo chick with a mohawk. Yeah. Okay.
0:46:14 Whatever. And everybody’s just doing their thing, shooting. And it’s, of course, that’s not every
0:46:20 archery range. No. But in Brooklyn, Gotham Archery, great spot. You see everything. And those people
0:46:26 will be right next to a dyed in the wool hunter who was born and raised in Montana who’s getting ready
0:46:32 for hunting season. Yeah. And everybody’s cool. Yeah. So that’s, that’s part of what I really have
0:46:44 enjoyed about it. All right. So Austin Powers fade back to KSL. So you get to the training center
0:46:51 and technically you’re perfect. And he’s just like, let her rip son. Just move forth, be bold and
0:46:58 prosper. Or was there more to it? Well, yeah. So perspective is I moved out there, I believe in the
0:47:04 end of August of 2016, world championships, junior world championships, the trials that I met him at.
0:47:11 It’s the first and only junior worlds I’d ever go to. And when we first moved there, we being other
0:47:15 people, because I also had another buddy of mine, Dan Shuler, who moved out there with me and my number
0:47:20 one competitor head to head since like 14 years old. And we just kind of pushed each other and kept
0:47:25 competing and moving up the ladder as we got older and older. So we both moved out to there at the
0:47:29 training center at the same time. And coach Lee said, I won’t change your form at all. Don’t worry,
0:47:35 train and compete through the world championships. And then we’ll work on your form. Because part of
0:47:40 the reason of going to the training center was to learn from coach Lee, to really learn how to be a
0:47:47 real archer. Because up until that point, my shot cycle, which is a thing that you do for archery,
0:47:51 it’s the same method over and over again. It’s like a, like a mantra, but physically,
0:47:56 it’s like a physical recipe, right? In a sense, just like someone who’s, let’s just say an Olympic
0:48:00 diver, right? They’re like, they’re going to have their routine never deviates. They’re probably
0:48:04 toweling off in the same way. They’re putting things in the same place, probably fold it the same and put
0:48:08 it in the same place on the railing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because all that genuinely matters at a high
0:48:15 level, at least to the routine for sure. And so for archery, my routine prior to that was pull back the
0:48:20 bow, anchor, look at the middle and wait for the clicker to click. There was no activation. There
0:48:24 was no mental talk. There was nothing. It was genuinely pull it back, look at the middle and
0:48:31 wait. That’s it. And so when I was there, there was about that two month time period before junior
0:48:38 worlds. And I started shooting phenomenal, like to the level of I could be easily competitive top two,
0:48:45 top three and the senior division really starting to shoot high level scores and frankly, to be a
0:48:52 threat to actually metal at junior worlds. So it’s very exciting. Yeah. And then about two weeks or so
0:48:59 before the actual event, before we went down to Mexico, everything changed. Coach Lee just decided
0:49:05 it’s time to change your form and not just change my form, change my equipment, which is another part of
0:49:13 it. And so to not exaggerate in the least, the only thing that was the same on my entire setup and in my
0:49:19 entire shot process was my riser, the center part of the bow that’s made of aluminum that the limbs,
0:49:26 the piece that Ben snap into and the riser and my sight bar, which is the thing that moves the sight.
0:49:34 So my sight pin, my finger tab, my arrows, my fletchings, my string, my stabilizers, my entire shot
0:49:41 process, how I stood, how I thought, what I told myself, everything had changed. And my scores went from
0:49:50 nationally competitive as a senior, a threat on the world scale as a junior to genuinely not shooting that
0:49:55 terrible ever, ever. Okay. It was the worst you’ve been shooting. Literally the worst I had ever shot
0:50:02 even before I picked up my recurve that for the very first time before going to the Empire State
0:50:08 Games. So if I took my scores at Empire State Games, I probably outshot my scores at junior worlds in
0:50:14 Mexico. Okay. Why would coach Lee do that two weeks before the competition? He’s an interesting guy.
0:50:19 And his reason was, I can’t take an archer that looks like that to world championships.
0:50:27 In his defense, my technique was atrocious. A completely arched back and just what we would
0:50:33 call a hollow back. So standing very upright, you know, I’m a young kid at the time, just turned 18,
0:50:37 barely strength trained ever. You know, I did some planks. That was my strength training, right?
0:50:43 And yeah, just couldn’t control my body and just didn’t look the part. You know,
0:50:49 he is known for having very specific looks in his archers, a very specific biomechanically efficient
0:50:56 movement with very precise loading of the structure of the body itself to maintain the weight of the
0:51:01 bow. And I was not doing that in the least. I asked him afterwards and he said, I was embarrassed to
0:51:07 bring those archers to a junior world championships. And he was not afraid to say it. Ultimately, I was
0:51:11 there for the Olympic games, not for junior world championships. So how could I ever say no?
0:51:16 My ultimate goal is to make the games, not to do anything at junior worlds, but it definitely had
0:51:22 quite an effect on my overall mental perspective of how things were going.
0:51:28 How long did it take you to build back up to the same scores or superior scores?
0:51:33 I would say probably three to four years.
0:51:38 Oh my God. So what are you saying to yourself mentally over that period of time? Because I would
0:51:42 imagine that would, could be incredibly demoralizing.
0:51:43 Yes.
0:51:53 And you would have, I would think moments of doubt. And I’m curious what kept you going and
0:51:58 how you kept yourself going during that period of time. Because I mean, look, I think I’m a glutton for
0:52:05 punishment and have pretty good pain tolerance, physical and mental, but I don’t know if I could
0:52:05 do that.
0:52:12 To put it in a context. So it took me three to four years to get back to zero square one. Whereas my
0:52:14 buddy, Dan Shuler, three months.
0:52:15 Oh, wow.
0:52:23 Maybe, maybe less. Yeah. So I don’t know why, but maybe three months or so for him. So I see
0:52:28 somebody who went out to the training center with me at the same time. I was at the same level, if not
0:52:35 potentially a little bit better, at least the way I saw it than him. And then extend my timeline times
0:52:41 15 times. That’s how long it took me much longer to take me to get back to zero. And so, yeah, it was
0:52:47 definitely very difficult mentally and emotionally for sure, because it was more than challenging to
0:52:52 say the least. And not only that, adding in physical challenges too, because prior to moving to the
0:52:57 training center, I was maybe shooting maybe a hundred, 120 arrows at the most I could ever shoot in a
0:53:02 single day. And I would maybe shoot that once a month. I would shoot often, don’t get me wrong,
0:53:05 but maybe it would be 50 to 60 arrows a session at the most.
0:53:10 Yep. And I thought I was doing a lot and never strength training. I went to the gym at school
0:53:16 and did planks and I don’t even know what some very basics, maybe wall sits or something like that.
0:53:20 Like really just not strength training. So move out of the training center, started shooting upwards of
0:53:25 four to 500 arrows every single day, strength training three days a week on the track, doing
0:53:30 morning workouts, six days a week and shooting overall six days a week. So super crazy amounts of
0:53:36 load, develop tendonitis, tendinosis and shoulders and dealing with all sorts of inflammation issues.
0:53:41 Still deal with a little bit of that today. And I have learned a lot of things to deal with that.
0:53:49 But at that time, I’m going to the sports medicine for hours a day. So I do prehab rehab exercises
0:53:55 every single day. And I’m the only one complaining of the pain in my shoulders and all sorts of other
0:53:58 things. Whereas all my other teammates are shooting just as much, if not more arrows than me with
0:54:03 just as much, if not more draw weight, going to the gym, doing all the same things. And none of them
0:54:08 had to go to sports medicine. Very few of them were even sore enough to feel like they needed to ice
0:54:14 or do anything. And I’m there having to do all sorts of different things. It was a big, big struggle
0:54:20 and a challenge. And I don’t know really what pushed me through exactly. I can’t really put my finger on
0:54:27 the pulse of that. But I think a lot of it actually have to attribute to my sister, Liz. She was
0:54:33 approaching things with a different mindset than pretty much that I have ever heard of in the past,
0:54:39 trying to manifest things instead of just going through the motions, instead of just doing it and
0:54:44 hoping the outcome changes, but to try to just overall bring what you want into fruition and to
0:54:49 not just hope that it’s going to happen. And so a big part of that was actually using affirmations.
0:54:55 And I had no idea what they were at the time, but she started bringing me into that mindset of using
0:55:00 positive affirmations to kind of change everything. I was dealing with being on depression medication and
0:55:06 all sorts of other things because if I had to pick one word to describe to you how I felt during that
0:55:14 timeframe, it was apathy. Just a lack of anything. And so fast forward to the positive affirmations
0:55:30 he has I am tattooed on basically, let’s just say the back of the hand, the webbing between the index finger
0:55:34 and the thumb on the left hand, which you’re going to check every time. Correct. Because that’s my bow
0:55:39 hand. I want to make sure my bow hand placement is precise in the grip. And so it’s not just I am,
0:55:45 it’s I am, period. It’s a statement, right? And so what is I am? I am is whatever you want to be.
0:55:53 So for me, it was I am an archer. I’m an Olympian, period. So changing my overall habits and mindset
0:56:00 started with just self-talk. And would you do that at basically that point in your shot cycle?
0:56:06 Yeah, it’s like trying to when you’re shooting an arrow, there’s a difference between trying to hit
0:56:12 the 10 ring and trying to not miss the 10 ring. There’s also a difference between fighting for
0:56:20 position and owning a position. And so ultimately, how is your approach? And so if you approach from
0:56:27 the stance of it has happened and you are, you are that person, then your habits just change.
0:56:34 And so genuinely, it was like, I am an Olympian, period. Okay. I’m not yet. I’m not using the
0:56:38 standard thing when I ask people, so what do you want to be? I want to be an Olympian. Okay, great.
0:56:43 You’re going to always want to be one. Let’s change that thought to be, I am an Olympian because then
0:56:49 your habits change. And so my habits change to be more of a, an approach of looking at myself
0:56:54 from an honest perspective of, am I doing the right thing? Am I getting enough sleep? Am I strength
0:57:00 training enough? Am I putting in enough effort? Am I being honest with myself? All of those things,
0:57:05 because if a champion would do whatever it was and I wasn’t doing it, I changed that. I made a decision
0:57:12 to make that change. I think a lot of it that took me out of that spiral, that negative spiral was just
0:57:17 believing. And using the present tense affirmations, positive affirmations.
0:57:22 Never a future tense. Because the future tense is just, you’re just setting yourself up to continue
0:57:27 to want that. It’s not done. If it’s done and you shoot from that position of,
0:57:35 I have arrived, I am that, I am what I want to be, then everything else can click.
0:57:39 And for people listening, this is not the first time that affirmations have come up on this podcast
0:57:44 with people who are top performers. It can be a really powerful tool. And to this day, I mean,
0:57:50 I’m still kind of like chasing the dream here, but my best ever day of shooting was a day early on when
0:57:58 I started using affirmations. And for me, it was, I am a top Lancaster competitor. And it was every
0:58:08 single shot. And we’ll talk about practice scores versus competition scores at some point, but it is
0:58:14 remarkable what that can contribute to, like what it can do. All right. So you’re rebuilding,
0:58:19 rebuilding three to four years. Good God. I mean, it’s an entire college experience, basically.
0:58:25 Talk about brutal, but you’ve made all of these decisions. You’ve had all this training. You’ve
0:58:33 got Coach Lee’s input. You have the positive affirmations. You’ve developed, maybe fine-tuned
0:58:38 your shot sequence, right? You’re no longer just staring at the middle of the target and waiting
0:58:44 until the clicker clicks. When does it all come together? Ultimately, it really came together in
0:58:50 2012 at the Olympic Games in London. So put it in perspective, as we talked about Korea already,
0:58:56 Korea is a powerhouse now. What the US was in the 80s, Korea is today. Just dominant for decades at this
0:59:01 point. Yeah. So just to put that in perspective, like if we take, could be the women’s team or the
0:59:08 men’s team, like how dominant? If you look at their medal record over time, what does it look like?
0:59:14 With the exception of the Korean men, the Korean women haven’t lost a gold medal individual or team
0:59:22 round. And I think like 28 years or something crazy. It’s, I don’t know exactly. It’s an absurd statistic.
0:59:25 I mean, it is as impeccable a record as a country can possibly have.
0:59:30 Correct. The only reason that I say with the Korean men as an exception is because they didn’t have an
0:59:35 individual male Olympic gold medal for quite some time. They just recently got one, finally.
0:59:36 Why is that?
0:59:37 I don’t know.
0:59:37 Yeah.
0:59:39 Maybe the pressure.
0:59:39 Yeah.
0:59:44 I don’t know. There’s a lot riding on it. There’s also a lot of benefit for them to perform well,
0:59:45 but there’s a lot of pressure.
0:59:49 Well, I would also, for sure, I didn’t really think about this because I guess on one hand,
0:59:53 you could say, well, wait a second. They’ve been shooting 700 hours a day since they were a fetus.
0:59:58 Why can’t they handle the pressure? But at the same time, you told me, I can’t remember who it
1:00:04 was. You don’t need to mention them. But what did someone say to you to calm you down before one
1:00:07 competition? I can cue you. Do you remember what I’m talking about?
1:00:07 Yeah.
1:00:08 What is it?
1:00:10 Yeah. No one gives a shit.
1:00:10 Yeah.
1:00:13 Meaning in the US about.
1:00:14 Meaning I’m not LeBron.
1:00:15 Yeah.
1:00:17 I’m not Kobe. I’m not Michael.
1:00:17 Right.
1:00:19 Right. No one’s watching. No one cares.
1:00:21 Right. So relax. Take some pressure off yourself.
1:00:23 I believe he actually said no one cares.
1:00:31 So in contrast, right, if you’re a top Olympic competitor in Korea, you are LeBron. You are
1:00:35 Kobe. Everyone cares and everyone is watching.
1:00:35 Yes.
1:00:37 So it’s a tremendous amount of pressure.
1:00:38 Oh, for sure. Yeah.
1:00:38 Yeah.
1:00:39 It’s a lot of pressure no matter what. Okay.
1:00:40 So 2012.
1:00:45 So 2012, the Korean men then because of the team. So we’re leading into the team rounds
1:00:47 because that’s, that’s where we’re heading here.
1:00:53 And how does that work? Is it like the cumulative points of three people who go round robin?
1:00:58 So we do round robins head to head, single elimination for elimination. We do that individually.
1:01:03 We also do that as a team. So you, you seed yourself in the ranking round. There’s 64 men
1:01:08 competing one through 64, one verse 64, two verse 63, and so on. And that’s how you decide
1:01:11 the individual. Correct. That’s how you decide the individual champion.
1:01:17 Team round. It’s your three archers combined score that ranks you as a team amongst the
1:01:23 other teams. And then it’s, there was 12 teams at the time. And so you then same thing, just
1:01:29 like the, uh, March madness style bracket, it’s single elimination and head to head. And so
1:01:33 you shoot three archers together as a team, you shoot in rotation. So you step on and off
1:01:37 the line and you have a very limited amount of time to shoot your arrows. So there’s no time
1:01:42 to second guess, no time to let down and you have to be a well-oiled machine to execute
1:01:47 properly. Yeah. Let me just say, so let down for people who may not get that. If you pull
1:01:54 back and you make a mistake or you didn’t set up properly, doesn’t feel right. You can choose
1:02:00 if you’re practicing, let’s just say to let down, which means slowly bring the string back
1:02:03 to the bow and start over. You essentially abort the shot. Yeah. You pull back. You’re
1:02:07 like, eh, something doesn’t feel right. Right. The wind’s blowing harder. I had a negative
1:02:13 thought, which is what I had to do over and over again today because I overdrew and click the
1:02:18 clicker when I was not prepared to release the shot. Yep. So not having any wiggle room,
1:02:23 no wiggle room. There’s just really no time to second guess and you just have to go for
1:02:31 it. So after the ranking round, Korea was ranked first and the United States was ranked either
1:02:37 third or fourth. So that means that we would meet in the semifinals. And so that meant whoever won the
1:02:43 semifinals would go for gold. And then the loser of that match would have silver. And then the loser
1:02:48 of the semifinal match would have the chance to win bronze in the next match. And so we were seated
1:02:54 to meet Korea in the semifinals. And so the first question that we got asked as a team and the coach
1:02:59 included coach Lee was, so how does it feel to be shooting for bronze tomorrow? Because that’s
1:03:04 that’s just the assumption. That is the assumption. That’s such a dick question.
1:03:11 God. Yeah. So like, I don’t even know who, who the actual media outlet was, but it’s like,
1:03:15 so how does it feel to be shooting for bronze? It’s like, have you been watching at all? We are
1:03:19 at the U S men at that time, we’re ranked number one in the world as team, as a team round, because
1:03:24 we were winning world cup events, which are world ranking events leading up to that and doing quite
1:03:30 well. The Koreans were ranked second in the world and we had beat them several times on the world cup
1:03:35 scale. But of course, everybody’s just assuming that they’re going to be dominant because they had one
1:03:42 for the last decade straight or more. And so it was a interesting wake up call all of a sudden to be
1:03:48 like, what can you ask that question again? So it was just a shock to say the least, but
1:03:56 the power of positive affirmations. By that time I started changing my thought process and talking,
1:04:03 not just, I am an Olympian period. It became much more powerful and actionable and timely. So tying
1:04:12 smart goals into positive affirmations of I am an Olympian or I am 2012 Olympic champion because I run my
1:04:17 mental program more than any other archer period. So it’s not just, I am not just, I am an Olympian.
1:04:24 I am an Olympian at this specific time, at this specific event for this specific reason. And that
1:04:30 specific reason is something that I’ve identified as a absolute crucial thing to do every single shot
1:04:35 in order to succeed. That’s how I ended up talking to myself at that timeframe, to that level of detail.
1:04:41 So of course, whatever our response to the media was at that time, I’m not exactly sure.
1:04:42 What did Coach Lee say?
1:04:46 Well, we had a lot of opportunity to talk to a lot of media leading up to the event.
1:04:54 So we get to London 15 days before the start of the competition where they’re training and media’s
1:04:58 there asking us questions during sessions that we book. And so the Korean media was coming in asking
1:05:03 Coach Lee questions about basically the same kind of thing. How does it feel to win silver before we
1:05:08 haven’t even shot an arrow yet, essentially. And he started saying things in Korean, responding to them
1:05:14 as their questions were in Korean as well. And you could just see the shock of this reporter’s face,
1:05:20 right? And even the cameraman’s like, just this response. And so after the media left, we asked
1:05:24 Coach Lee, so what did you say to them? And he said, let’s just put it this way. I don’t think I’m
1:05:30 going to be welcome back in Korea. So I don’t know what he said. He didn’t really fill in the details
1:05:40 there. But the idea was essentially that the power that we had as a team of the confidence, not just
1:05:47 the archers individually, the archers as a team, because we were really the first and only team to
1:05:53 compete as a team in that tournament. So normally it’s individual. It’s an individual sport. That’s what
1:05:58 it is. That’s what the prestige is. And you happen to have three individuals that come together to compete
1:06:03 as a team, but they’re just still shooting as individuals. If somebody shoots say worse than
1:06:07 the others, it’s easy to kind of point fingers and be like, that’s the reason why we didn’t win because
1:06:12 it’s an individual sport. It’s like, we’re a team. We win as a team, we lose as a team. And so we had
1:06:18 that genuine change. Our main focus was team rounds. It was not individual, the three of us, because
1:06:24 there’s 12 other teams and there’s 64 other individuals. You only have to win three matches to be in the
1:06:29 medals and team rounds. Whereas you have to win five or six matches to be in an individual medal.
1:06:35 And so statistically much easier to medal as a team than as an individual. So we genuinely trained
1:06:41 every day. Once we selected the team leading up to that event as a team, encouraging each other,
1:06:48 learning each other’s shot, not just learning each other’s shot, but during this head-to-head match play,
1:06:53 there’s no time for equipment failures. So if your equipment breaks, you can’t go fix it.
1:06:59 So usually you have a backup bow and the backup bow is just there and it’s kind of working. You do
1:07:04 your best to make it as good as your primary bow, but it’s your backup bow for a reason. It’s just
1:07:10 doesn’t shoot as well for whatever reason. And coach Lee basically said, backup bows are pointless because
1:07:15 if your main bow breaks, you’re mentally just going to be shot. So what’s the point? Don’t even bother
1:07:22 setting up a backup bow. And so we actually shot each other’s primary bows as our backup. So I shot Brady’s
1:07:24 bow and I shot Jacob Wookiee’s bow.
1:07:29 Well, hold on a second. Hold on. So how similar are your draw lengths and like your ape index,
1:07:30 right? In terms of like…
1:07:32 Not at all. But the thing is I’m using…
1:07:37 Ape index is… Anyway, you guys can look it up, but it’s just like your physical proportions
1:07:39 are not the same.
1:07:39 Correct.
1:07:41 And at that level, certainly everything is…
1:07:42 Everything matters.
1:07:46 For sure. Not just that, the balance of the bow, the feel of the grip, the sight pin, all of
1:07:52 those things. And so the thing that is constant is our arrows. So we use our same arrow. And
1:07:58 our clickers, the device that’s a draw check, was roughly in the same place. I think the only
1:08:02 exception was one of us and Brady chose to not even bother with a clicker when he was shooting
1:08:06 one of our bows as a backup. He would just pull back, control the shot and execute good shots
1:08:13 and deal with that. Whereas I used their clickers. And essentially, I learned that… I think Brady’s
1:08:19 bow, maybe I hit low eight. So about eight, 10 inches low at 70 meters. So I would just aim high
1:08:24 eight with his bow. And Jacob Wookiee’s, I’d have to aim like low right blue or something crazy to
1:08:25 actually have the arrow land in the middle.
1:08:34 So we just played this game, right? And so it was just this level of intimacy per se as a team that
1:08:38 no one else had in the world because they all trained as individuals, not as a team.
1:08:43 So a quick couple of questions then, because I guess to even me listening, I’m like, well,
1:08:48 it’s still kind of an individual thing. I used to wrestle way back in the day. And it’s like,
1:08:53 okay, yeah, you’re a team and you want to be supportive. The backup bow using someone else’s
1:08:56 primary as your backup is super interesting. This is the first time I’m hearing of it.
1:09:02 Are there any other strategies where let’s just say, I’m making this up, but okay, it’s like the wind
1:09:06 disgusting. And the first person up is going to have to deal with the brunt of it, you think. So
1:09:12 you pick the person who seems to be best in high winds. I’m making that up. I have no idea. But
1:09:18 are, is there any other strategy that you can build around the team?
1:09:23 Yes. I mean, so for us, the wind is actually was part of it. We’ll get to that in a second. But
1:09:27 if you approach team rounds as an individual, you’re working on your own shot and that’s it.
1:09:32 So you, you either shoot a 10 or you don’t. And your teammate who’s also your opponent
1:09:38 and individuals either shoots a 10 or he doesn’t. And that’s just how it normally works. But what we
1:09:44 did was we worked with each other to understand a little bit more about each other’s shot cycle,
1:09:50 each other’s mental approach, what makes someone better than doesn’t. Like, do you want to hear
1:09:54 your name when you’re at full draw? Like, come on, Tim, shoot a 10. Or do you want just,
1:09:59 all right, strong shot, something that’s general, but not specific to you. And so there’s little
1:10:05 things that you learn, but then also there’s a supreme trust in each other. And so in team rounds,
1:10:11 you have to communicate with each other how the shot went. And then ultimately, where did the arrow go
1:10:17 compared to how the shot went? And then the next shooter makes adjustments based on that because the
1:10:23 wind is always changing. I see. Right. So each person is a feedback mechanism for everyone else.
1:10:28 Exactly. Yeah. And also the coaches too, because he has this third person view. He’s not shooting,
1:10:34 but he’s able to look at stuff, the wind blowing in different areas. And actually the very specific
1:10:39 thing that coach Lee did with the wind that we couldn’t as archers because of a piece of clothing
1:10:45 choice that he made different than us at that day. The day being when we shot for medals. If we just
1:10:52 fast forward to the actual medal rounds, we are in the semifinal match against Korea. We almost lose our
1:10:56 first match. We’re very close to actually losing and just barely squeaked by by a point or two.
1:11:02 And, um, but there was no doubt that we were ever going to lose, at least in my head. I had no fear
1:11:08 of that. I was so supremely confident because of this affirmation, the power of it, that there was
1:11:12 never a doubt. Even when we were behind in the match, it just was like, it’s supposed to happen
1:11:19 this way. Apparently, you know, and once we got to the semifinal against Korea, everybody said that
1:11:24 was the gold medal match of the games actually, because everybody wanted to see that Korea was
1:11:28 powerhouse. U S is ranked number one. It’s the Olympic games. What’s going to happen. Everybody’s
1:11:34 watching. We actually had, I think the highest viewership of any Olympic sport at the 2012 Olympics
1:11:39 during that match. That’s why they put us on TV because we were the first metal of the U S our
1:11:44 first chance to get a metal. And, you know, back then it was Twitter and I had comments saying, I
1:11:50 love my sports team, whatever it is, the Sabres or the Buffalo bills or whatever, you know, people from
1:11:55 my hometown. And they’re like, I have never stood on my couch and screamed at the TV, but I did when I
1:12:02 saw archery at the Olympics. That’s incredible. Yeah. So cool stuff. So the wind, we usually we
1:12:07 have a wind sock. The wind sock is not a calibrated wind sock. So meaning if it’s at a certain angle,
1:12:14 it’s a certain speed. We don’t do that in archery for whatever reason, but it’s always at 50 meters.
1:12:20 So the distance we shoot is 70. The flag is, you know, three fifths of the way down range or so. And
1:12:25 it’s always on a specific pole at a specific height. And you have, you know, every so often they’re
1:12:29 placed. And so you have a general consistent reference as to what the wind sock’s doing and
1:12:33 how you can guess where to aim. And that’s ultimately as best as you can do as guests.
1:12:40 And so we were shooting at Lord’s cricket ground and on the pitch where they bowl the ball back and
1:12:47 forth to each other, the people who stand on that, the lawn care people are anointed by the queen to be
1:12:53 allowed to stand on the hollowed ground. The lawnmower is anointed by the queen to be allowed to mow her
1:12:58 grass. But because our wind sock and the stand that held that wind sock was not anointed by the queen
1:13:04 or whatever they call it, it was not allowed to be there. So they put it in a different location
1:13:10 that it ever had been at any other event. We’re also shooting in a stadium within the stadium is
1:13:15 another stadium inside of that stadium where the archery fans are sitting and the stands go down
1:13:21 probably 50 meters. There’s several thousands of people in the stand and it kind of fans out
1:13:29 towards the target. And so we’re guessing, we’re genuinely guessing where to aim ultimately before
1:13:36 that match. Coach Lee was like, trust me, I know where you need to aim. Okay. You’re not shooting.
1:13:43 How do you know? I’m the lead off. Jacob Boogie shoots second. Brady Ellison shoots third. And I have
1:13:48 to do my job when I lead off to shoot a supremely confident shot.
1:13:52 Clean shots that you can depend on so that you can use that to calibrate for everybody else.
1:14:00 Correct. Or be so in tune with my shot when I make an error, I know or can essentially estimate where that
1:14:07 arrow should land and then compare where it actually lands to where it should land and then suggest to
1:14:11 Jacob Boogie where to aim. So to give you an idea as a quick sidetrack, when I let go of the string at
1:14:15 70 meters, I can tell you within the size of about a baseball where that arrow is going on the target
1:14:20 the moment I let it go. Because I’ve shot so many arrows, I verified where it went on the target looking
1:14:25 through a spotting scope and attributed my feeling of how the shot went to where it landed. And so I can just
1:14:31 tell you exactly where it’s going to go. And so that’s my job as lead off. Coach Lee is wearing shorts. We’re wearing
1:14:38 pants. He can feel the wind blowing on his leg hairs. And he’s like, aim left nine. Okay.
1:14:41 That’s wild.
1:14:47 Yeah. So good luck finding any other team that has ever worked that closely together. We ultimately ended up winning
1:14:54 and then went on to lose the gold medal match by a fraction of an inch at 70 meters away. But I mean,
1:14:59 ultimately, everyone came up to us afterwards and said that was the gold medal match, regardless of how the actual
1:15:05 medals end. So supreme confidence in that positive statements, those positive affirmations of just
1:15:14 supreme faith and belief in the process as it’s happening, even if it’s not going well, like our first match when
1:15:19 we were losing, we were behind the first several ends of the match. And the matches are only four ends.
1:15:23 So an end is somebody getting up and shooting a group of arrows.
1:15:28 Correct. So as a team, that would be each archer shoots two arrows. So that’s a total of six arrows.
1:15:34 That’s an end. And then a cumulative score at that time was shot. So whoever had the highest score of
1:15:40 24 arrows after four ends, because that’s the total amount shot that team won in advanced in the match.
1:15:43 It’s an incredible story. That’s crazy. I’ve never heard a bunch of these. This is wild.
1:15:49 Like in all the time we spent together. It’s nuts. Just for comedic relief, because you mentioned the
1:15:56 Korean media interviews and them looking shocked talking to Coach Lee. So I’ll just share a sidebar
1:16:02 on Coach Lee. So I’ve had a little bit of interaction. So flew to San Diego because we did a little bit
1:16:06 of training together and I wanted to meet this famous coach Lee. Why not? And so I made the introduction
1:16:14 and said, Hey, Coach Lee, Tim would like to work with you. Yeah. And so I landed in San Diego and a few
1:16:21 things that are, I think, fun to share. So the first is we meet at this outdoor range and I’m going to be
1:16:29 shooting mostly at 20 yards to 60 feet. Let’s just call it roughly. And we hang out for 45 minutes.
1:16:34 I’m taking copious notes. He’s giving me some pointers. And then we stop and he’s like, okay,
1:16:41 I think you have plenty to work with. And I don’t think you need my help anymore. And I was like,
1:16:47 uh, cause I’d flown down planning to be there for a week or something, five days, something along those
1:16:50 lines. Not just to be there for five days, but to be there explicitly to train with him.
1:16:59 And so at some point I’m like a bit crestfallen. I’m like, Oh man, letting my head hang like Eeyore.
1:17:09 I’m like, Oh fuck. I do feel like I need more help. And we start talking about somehow we get talking
1:17:16 about firearms and guns. And he is very interested in marksmanship and all things, firearms. And so he
1:17:20 gets more excited and we’re chatting, we’re talking about this, that, and the other thing.
1:17:25 And then he asks me, so what brings you to San Diego? And I was like, well,
1:17:35 maybe this sounds strange, but I flew here to train with you. And he’s like, Oh, okay. Tonight’s Korean
1:17:42 barbecue. So we go out to dinner and end up having an amazing time training with him. And he’s really
1:17:50 one-of-a-kind. And also the reason I was mentioning the shocked look on the faces of the Korean media is
1:17:53 you do not worry about Coach Lee speaking his mind.
1:17:55 Oh no. He’s so direct.
1:18:00 You do not have to worry about him sugarcoating things. And to give you an example, later I ended
1:18:07 up driving to his house behind which he has all these targets set up. And basically I was the only
1:18:11 non-Asian there. Absolutely. A hundred percent of the only non-Asian, which is fine. It was just
1:18:17 Korean army and tons of Korean kids. Also some like Taiwanese kids and Chinese kids, but they’re all
1:18:24 12 years old and shooting by my standards, especially at that point, incredibly well.
1:18:29 And I’m off in the corner, like getting some pointers from Coach Lee and just looking like
1:18:35 a total remedial case, which is fine. And then at one point he wants to give like pep talk to the
1:18:40 kids. And he’s like, Tim, Tim, come over here. Okay. And so we all stand in a circle and he’s giving this
1:18:50 very Coach Lee motivational talk, which is like 60% inspiration, 40% you need to shape up or ship out,
1:18:55 cuffing up kids. And at one point, cause I’m wondering why I’m in this circle. And he points
1:19:02 to me and he’s like, he’s like, look, this is Tim. And he is an old man, a very old man. And he’s here
1:19:10 training seriously. And I was like, Oh, I see if I can be a inspirational slash like warning tale for
1:19:14 these, these amazing young children with so much promise. I’m in, I’m in for it. I’m in for it,
1:19:20 but it’s just so endearing. And the guy’s genius. He’s really one of a kind. Okay. So those are my
1:19:28 Coach Lee stories. Thank you, Coach Lee. Let’s talk about your coaching and what we ended up doing
1:19:34 and all the experiments along the way, because you mentioned, for instance, you know, Coach Lee’s
1:19:39 feeling the leg hair and the movement and you’re providing feedback. You’re getting familiar with
1:19:49 one another’s shot cycles. The little things matter. It is hard for me to explain verbally,
1:19:58 just how many tiny, tiny, tiny details make a huge difference with archery. And just the way you hook
1:20:05 your fingers on the string, the exact placement, how far it is from the fold of one joint, the amount of
1:20:13 curl of the fingers, how much you use your, you’re using in this case, index, middle and ring finger,
1:20:22 the degree to which you can see or not see as a coach, my nail on my ring finger and the difference
1:20:29 that makes the angle of the back of the hand and the difference that makes the level of detail is
1:20:35 really unbelievable when you want to start training and performing with precision.
1:20:42 Okay. So I find you, we meet up and then ultimately about six months out from Lancaster,
1:20:49 decide to take it seriously. Now there are a few constraints, right? One is you live in Florida.
1:20:55 I do not live in Florida. So we have limited in-person training. Although I think we did a good job with
1:21:02 that, what would you say maybe on average, was it like a few days a month or like a week every six
1:21:03 weeks, something like that?
1:21:10 Probably somewhere in that timeframe. I think I was maybe there for three to four days once every six
1:21:11 weeks. Yeah.
1:21:19 Yeah. And we’re doing a lot of virtual training. I travel a lot. So if there are awards for most
1:21:23 varied training environments, I think I would win that one hands down.
1:21:24 For sure in the barebow division.
1:21:25 In the barebow.
1:21:29 Absolutely. The only exception would be like your professional archer who is traveling the world
1:21:34 competing. Yeah. But that’s the only exception. And then there’s no one doing that in barebow.
1:21:35 Yeah. I mean, I was not even remotely.
1:21:42 So I ended up bringing my roller bag, which looks like it’s carrying an assault rifle. Customs do not
1:21:46 love this bag. Like, sir, what’s in the bag?
1:21:48 Sporting a gear.
1:21:56 Sporting gear is the answer. That’s how you get your bow and arrow through customs. But I traveled all over
1:22:04 the place, all over the country in the US, certainly. And I would check my targets. And often it’s just a
1:22:08 big cube of foam. And they’d be like, sir, what’s in the box? And I’m like, there’s nothing in the box.
1:22:13 And they’d be like, sir, need you to be serious right now. What’s in the cube? I’m like, it’s solid
1:22:17 foam. And they’re like, yeah, but what’s inside it? I’m like, foam. And this would go on and on and on.
1:22:26 And, you know, going to Hawaii, going to Canada, going to the UK, where I ended up going on this
1:22:34 pilgrimage trail, Cotswalt’s Way. And at every tiny inn, I would have to negotiate, try to pitch
1:22:42 my little heart out to shoot in the backyard or anywhere. I ended up shooting from inside a hotel
1:22:46 to outside the hotel. I ended up shooting from outside a hotel, through the living room, through
1:22:49 the kitchen, into a laundry room where I hit a target.
1:22:50 Pickleball courts.
1:22:50 Pickleball courts.
1:22:51 Tennis courts.
1:22:52 Tennis courts.
1:22:53 Batting cages.
1:23:00 Batting cages, right, where you have like kids whacking balls with aluminum bats and screeching and
1:23:01 hooting and hollering.
1:23:02 Eight feet from you.
1:23:02 Eight feet from you.
1:23:05 So if you want distraction training, that’s a great way to do it.
1:23:12 So we had some things to work around, but the forcing function was for me, and this is always
1:23:19 the case, the magic of a deadline. And having a competition on the books, which I wasn’t 100%
1:23:23 committed to, but I was like, let me behave as if, let me train as if I’m going to compete.
1:23:29 It’s like, I don’t want to embarrass myself. I don’t want to embarrass you. Let’s see how it goes.
1:23:33 But I remember probably a few months out, like paying the registration fee and I’m like, okay,
1:23:39 now my name is online for everybody to see. That probably means I should go.
1:23:43 And then the question is, all right, what do you do if you have six months to train?
1:23:50 And a few things come to mind immediately. Number one is you’re always going to have things to work
1:23:55 around. So it could be logistics, could be in my case, my left shoulder, which was reconstructed
1:24:04 in 2004 and it was a real limiter, had many different physiological limiters. Right now I have a
1:24:08 probably going to require surgery, my right elbow, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. It’s like, okay,
1:24:15 well, we will have to just work around it. And lo and behold, you can work around. You might have to
1:24:22 make some compromises. Okay, fine. But it’s like, if, for instance, as we experienced, if shooting with
1:24:28 a particular stance causes my back to seize up and it’s producing a lot of incredible pain, okay,
1:24:35 we’ll make a few compromises on that in order to minimize that. And then that’s going to trigger a
1:24:43 whole chain of other adaptations that we need to make. And like you, I guess, as a kid, I very quickly
1:24:50 found it meditative. Archery was almost like taking a break from my monkey mind. And particularly when you
1:24:56 start to focus on, and this is something we focused on pretty early. I want to give Joel Turner again,
1:25:01 credit shot IQ in terms of like the boot up sequence and blueprinting your best shots,
1:25:08 really having a script for your checklist, like your pre-flight checklist as you’re going through
1:25:16 your entire shooting motion and having, for instance, positive affirmation. Where do you put that? You want
1:25:25 to put it in the same place every single time. And then I would say also recognizing that given some of
1:25:30 the physical limitations is like, okay, I can’t do 500 hours a day. Forget it.
1:25:36 We started at 60 something arrows a limited day, I think. Oh, max. Yeah. Yeah. That was the absolute
1:25:41 max. Yep. And a lot of that had to do with, you know, very typical Tim Ferriss fashion, as I know
1:25:49 now to overdo everything to 11 out of four. Yeah. I was basically doing like a Mr. Olympia pose down
1:25:55 every time I was trying to shoot the arrow. So there was a lot more tension in the system than was
1:26:02 necessary. Yeah. Which is, I just, in fairness, in my own defense, really common. Go to a range and watch,
1:26:07 especially guys who have a little bit of muscle shooting these things. And it’s like, whoa, okay,
1:26:10 this guy’s like trying to hulk his own shirt off.
1:26:16 But for you, the challenge was you had actual injuries, actual limitations. So how much were those
1:26:23 affecting the system versus the excessive tension? And it was this back and forth juggling to figure out
1:26:28 what was what? What was the cause? Yeah. So there’s a lot of detective work. And for instance, in the left
1:26:34 shoulder, you have two titanium screws, had the whole arm ripped out doing some combat sports stuff
1:26:39 a million years ago. And my arm ended up sticking out of my chest, basically. And I won’t get into all the
1:26:45 gory details, but suffice to say, when you tack down the shoulder with these screws, you create some
1:26:51 limitations. And as a consequence of that, I had a lot of tendinosis in rotator cuff muscles,
1:26:57 super spinatus. They’re a mess, really, really tangled up. So what that means is like, okay,
1:27:02 how do we work around this rather than do I need to stop? I mean, look, there are times when you need
1:27:06 to stop. Like right now with this elbow that requires surgery, I’m probably going to have to take a break
1:27:11 from the hard stuff for a little while, two to three months. But outside of that, it’s like, okay,
1:27:17 how do we work around this? And that took a bunch of different forms, including like rather than trying
1:27:21 whack out. I mean, we ultimately got to the point when we were training in person, at least that we
1:27:28 were doing what, 200 plus arrows on some days. And there were many aspects to that. And then we can
1:27:34 talk about some of the technical stuff, but just from the physical workaround perspective, when I
1:27:40 started practicing, there were a few things that I would do. And all of this we talked about, and I was
1:27:45 building off of your advice. So rather than doing one session, break it into two sessions
1:27:52 and also start and end your sessions with blank bill practice. Do you want to explain what blank bill
1:28:00 is? Because this avoids the target panic that you mentioned earlier. And I think is an incredible tool
1:28:03 that I found very, very helpful. What is blank bill practice?
1:28:09 The blank bail is, so the bail, the target bail is blank. There’s no target face on it, nothing to
1:28:17 aim at, not even a spot, a shadow, a hole or whatever. You can do small amounts of aiming per
1:28:23 se, but it is not for the sake of precision. It’s not trying to hit the 10 ring or anything like that.
1:28:29 What it does is it removes the aiming requirement or the aiming distraction from the process.
1:28:36 And when you were at the high level using blank bill practice, how far away from the target do
1:28:36 you stand?
1:28:43 Generally speaking for blank bail, I would be eight feet or so from the target. So you’re
1:28:48 never going to miss. And so you’re just simply going through repetition. It’s like a palate cleanser
1:28:52 almost. So you go through your motions, you go through your shot process, but you’re not aiming at
1:28:58 anything. So you can confidently move through the movements without being careful or over analytical
1:29:03 or get yourself in a bind that can happen when you’re aiming at a target. So it allows you to
1:29:09 ingrain your technique to a level that really trains the subconscious brain to try to take over
1:29:16 when you’re in pressure situations. And it also allows you to put in a lot more repetition without
1:29:22 so much time spent walking the distance to go down to the target. So for me, going down to 70 meters
1:29:26 takes a bit of time to walk that distance. So instead I can just walk eight feet, pull my arrows and
1:29:30 pick up my bow and immediately start shooting again. So that’s what it meant to me. And the
1:29:35 amount of training at blank bail really depends on what you’re working on at that time. But generally
1:29:42 speaking, more is better because it really allows you to focus on the process and ingrain your steps.
1:29:47 You know, you talked about the level of detail with just the hook alone to be able to ingrain that,
1:29:50 to be automated to where you grab the string and you don’t even have to think about it.
1:29:55 You have to put in the reps. And so if you’re putting in the reps and you’re distracted by aiming,
1:30:00 it can take away your focus on that grip on that hook or whatever it may be.
1:30:05 Exactly. So I could use it for warming up in the beginning of a session, let’s say the beginning
1:30:11 of the first session. And then towards the end, I’d be like, okay, look, I got as anyone competitive is
1:30:20 likely to do. Overly fixated on the scoring and the aiming, the performance. Let me end on a good rep.
1:30:29 And so ending the training practices with blank bail just allowed me to settle the snow globe a bit,
1:30:34 focus on the biomechanics, particularly something, I mean, at least I took this approach in the training
1:30:41 session if I noticed, oh, you know what? I am collapsing a little bit, meaning losing back tension
1:30:48 in the following way. A, B, or C is happening. Or maybe I’m not pulling my bowhand pinky back enough
1:30:55 and therefore I’m landing right or whatever. I’m just going to focus on that for my blank bail.
1:31:00 That’s going to be my most important cue, particularly in the beginning, because if you try to incorporate
1:31:06 too much too quickly, you’re going to get the Mac ball of death beach ball, right? You’re not going
1:31:15 to be able to divide your attention and maintain any type of performance in the beginning. So a lot of
1:31:20 what I found so valuable with your coaching was the layering. When do you choose to introduce certain
1:31:28 things? And I also really liked the focus on biomechanics. So the blank bail you could think of in
1:31:32 a way as if, let’s just say you’re, I don’t even know if they do this, but I’m making it up. Let’s just say
1:31:38 you’re a major league pitcher and it’s like, all right, you’re trying to focus on some aspect of your
1:31:47 throw without the distraction of trying to put it right into the sweet spot of a catcher’s mitt. Then let’s
1:31:53 just say you had a very, very large net hanging. It’s like 20 feet just hanging down and you were just throwing
1:31:56 the ball into this net and working on the biomechanics.
1:31:59 It would be similar to like dry fire training with a pistol.
1:32:04 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Very similar. Yeah. Similar to dry firing, which you should never do
1:32:12 with a bow. We talk about that in our video. Unless you want your bow to explode, literally don’t do
1:32:20 that. And I’m trying to think in the early stages, what, because it was a detective process. And you know,
1:32:25 my mind is a little unusual at times and I process things a little differently. So do you recall like
1:32:30 what some of the early most important things were that we focused on in training?
1:32:38 A lot of them were conceptual things, not necessarily technical, physical, but thought process. How does the
1:32:45 shot go? What should you be trying to achieve kind of things? So a lot of those are really setting up
1:32:50 kind of the process of how to shoot a bow, not necessarily how to shoot tens with a bow.
1:32:50 Yeah.
1:32:54 So how to shoot tens with a bow comes later, I think. I’m not sure about that, but.
1:32:59 Yeah. And tens for just if people are getting distracted, just think about shooting both sides.
1:33:03 Yeah, exactly. So not how to put it in the middle, how to shoot a good shot. Right.
1:33:09 And so there are some really key factors that are super important to actually shooting a good shot.
1:33:16 One of those is follow through. It’s a very simple thing to explain. If you think of somebody,
1:33:21 say, throwing a ball or kicking a ball, the moment of contact of the foot hitting the ball,
1:33:26 when you kick the ball is when you let go of the string for shooting archery, or when you let go of
1:33:29 the baseball, when you’re throwing it, that’s the moment you let go of the string and shooting
1:33:35 archery. And so follow through is what happens after that motion. No one ever in any other sport,
1:33:42 including baseball and soccer, stop their motion of their foot or their arm the moment they let go of
1:33:46 the object or make contact with it. Just doesn’t happen. Same thing with golf, right? So stuff happens
1:33:52 afterwards. That’s a follow through motion. That is a maintaining of your, in archery, we call it
1:33:57 tension and direction. You maintain that through follow through. So tension and direction being
1:34:03 pull back the bow, it’s wanting to collapse you. So you have to build tension against the bow, the system
1:34:09 and whatever direction that is going back with the string hand and forward with the bow hand,
1:34:16 that tension and direction has to maintain exactly how it is when you’re at full draw through the release
1:34:22 until the follow through finishes. So that would be the principle of like tension and direction and just
1:34:27 follow through in general. It’s a very simple concept to imagine, but it’s quite difficult to kind of
1:34:34 implement. So we worked a lot on the technical aspects of how to apply that physically throughout
1:34:41 the months or years. We’ve been working together for a couple of years now, but really that last six
1:34:47 months leading up to Lancaster, trying to hone that in to be fluid, one motion, not fake, not two points.
1:34:52 So not letting go of the string, losing all that tension of the string hand, and then faking a follow
1:34:58 through motion. So it’s like, for those that are watching the motion would look something similar as,
1:35:03 so the hand touching the face at anchor, the fingers opening the arm, not moving and then moving back in
1:35:09 a second motion. So a good follow through would be the same fluid backward motion of the elbow, the same
1:35:14 exact time that the fingers are pushed out of the way of the string. And then that tension just continues
1:35:17 until you run out of range of motion with the shoulder.
1:35:24 Yeah. I mean, imagine just for a visual for folks, if you had like a theraband or a giant rubber band
1:35:31 and you got into an archery position and you’re holding that rubber band at max tension, the way that
1:35:37 it would simulate holding the string of a bow. And then you closed your eyes and somebody walked up
1:35:38 and just cut the rubber band.
1:35:40 Correct. What would happen?
1:35:46 And the arms kept going, obviously you didn’t expect it. And that would be what you then have
1:35:50 to do consciously on some level. It should take care of itself. If you’re using
1:35:56 the proper thought process, proper thought process and proper tension in the back and not in the arm.
1:36:01 But even if the tension is improper in the back or the arm, the follow through will happen if you
1:36:05 have that concept of maintaining whatever tension it is right or wrong when you’re at full draw,
1:36:07 but you continue through through release.
1:36:11 Well, and this also relates to the inner monologue.
1:36:12 Exactly.
1:36:17 Right. So when you’re at anchor, okay, so you’ve got your strings fully pulled back again for people
1:36:21 listening or not familiar with archery, your hand is glued to your face or under the jaw in the
1:36:26 case of Olympic archery. Okay. Now at this point, what are you saying to yourself?
1:36:28 Or what do you sometimes say to yourself?
1:36:28 For me?
1:36:28 Yeah.
1:36:32 There’s a lot of different options, but basically just continued motion.
1:36:37 Yeah. Continue the back shoulder moving around and behind me and the bow moving forward.
1:36:38 Yeah. Or like finish the shot.
1:36:39 Correct. Or finish the shot.
1:36:44 So one of the things that I talked to Coach Lee about somewhat recently when I had dinner with
1:36:50 him about a year and a half ago or so was, so anything new to share? And well, he chuckled first.
1:36:55 And then his response was, you’re not going to like this or others won’t like this actually.
1:37:01 And he said, release is not a step anymore. We do not release the string. And I said,
1:37:05 tell me more. He said, well, if you follow through and your main primary focus when you are
1:37:10 at full draw before you let go of the string is to follow through correctly, the release will take
1:37:16 care of itself. If you maintain and execute a good proper follow through your release is good. But if
1:37:21 you’re focused on the release, you cannot then switch your brain fast enough to the follow through
1:37:26 motion because the follow through is it’s frankly a reaction, not an action. So it tells you everything
1:37:30 about the tension that you’ve built up in the system when you’re at full draw. So it’s my job to
1:37:35 watch you and see the motion that the elbow moves and the hand moves and the bow hand moves and all sorts of
1:37:40 different spots of the body, even your head movement. The moment the string comes off your
1:37:45 fingers, what direction does a particular body part move? And that the motion of that body part
1:37:49 tells me the tension that you have at full draw because I’ve shot enough arrows and I’ve watched
1:37:57 enough people with enough intention and attention to look at their form, analyze it, and just overall,
1:38:03 just watch. I can see where the tension is built. And then a lot of the stuff that we did working
1:38:10 together was when you’re at full draw, I’m behind you and I’m like, I’m making motions and doing things
1:38:16 to feel what you’re feeling. So I can assume that if the hands coming out, there’s a change of tension
1:38:21 going outward of the release hand coming away from your face when you let go, instead of maintaining that
1:38:26 line along your neck as it comes back off your face. So if I mimic what you’re doing, I get a
1:38:31 bit of an insight as to what you’re feeling. And then I can communicate with you nearly at the same
1:38:37 language, hopefully, maybe not using the same words, but at least trying to meet you where you’re at.
1:38:42 Tap the muscle I should be feeling as a primary mover when I’m supposed to feel it.
1:38:47 Correct. Yes. And I only get that based on looking at what you’re doing and just overall trying to
1:38:52 really just tear down the shot and see what’s happening on the inside.
1:38:55 Yeah. So flashing back then thinking about
1:39:01 say the six months leading up to Lancaster, a couple of things. So one is
1:39:06 I, for a very long time, people are going to find this pretty funny.
1:39:10 number one, I didn’t care about hitting the bullseye. I did care about grouping.
1:39:17 Right. So I wanted arrows to land very close to one another. Right. But if they were bottom left,
1:39:22 top right, my assumption was, and I’m sure this is based off of conversations we had,
1:39:30 if you’re shooting consistently, if you’re getting good groups consistently, it’s not just a one-off kind
1:39:39 of lucky bunch of arrows. Then moving that on the target face is not going to say necessarily simple,
1:39:44 but it ended up being pretty straightforward as we got further down. Yeah.
1:39:49 But doing the blank bail, got to the point with the blank bail where, granted, it’s like for me,
1:39:54 10 feet away, 12 feet away, whatever, that these arrows were just getting clumped, like right on top
1:39:59 of one another. Even if I shot, I know this is maybe not your favorite thing, but I did this too. Like
1:40:06 like sometimes releasing with my eyes closed. Sure. And then how long before Lancaster did I start
1:40:10 aiming with the crest of the arrow to? Yeah. So about two weeks.
1:40:18 So, so what Tim was doing was, was, uh, having blind faith that the arrow would land in the middle
1:40:24 by using instinctive aiming per se. Well, I was also doing a few things that you recommended because
1:40:34 in fairness, we tried to have me aim earlier and I had for the first time target panic with the
1:40:39 understanding that the tip is always going to move. But I had, I started to develop this anxiety around
1:40:43 shooting because you didn’t want to let it go when the point wasn’t right on the middle.
1:40:50 Exactly. It wasn’t right on the bullseye, so to speak. And I also didn’t have the biomechanical control
1:40:57 and the conditioning, which had to compensate for all sorts of things to do it effectively. Right.
1:41:03 So, and we also hadn’t adjusted your bow either because we did make compromises within your equipment
1:41:08 to help work with the shoulder. We did a bunch of stuff with that. We won’t necessarily get into
1:41:12 because it gets really technical, but a lot of things that would confuse even
1:41:18 certain experienced folks, like the upper and lower limbs, right? Where you would attach the string,
1:41:26 switching those and making all sorts of tweaks to the equipment to compensate or to allow this
1:41:31 compromised shoulder to function, to work with you. Yeah. Not against you. Yeah, exactly. I mean,
1:41:36 because for instance, like the more weight, there’s a point of diminishing returns, but since you can’t
1:41:42 put stabilizers on a bare bow, people add weight. They just have to keep the weight very close to the
1:41:46 bow because this ring has to be able to pass over the whole thing for you to use it in competition.
1:41:54 But people had quite a bit of weight and it helps to stabilize things, but I could not tried,
1:42:01 but I couldn’t do it. My shoulder would develop all sorts of pain and tendon issues and just couldn’t do it.
1:42:06 And ultimately you could only shoot 60 arrows in a session. You couldn’t put in the amount of
1:42:11 arrows that was actually required to be proficient. Yeah, exactly. So I was like, okay, we’re going to
1:42:16 make yet another trade-off, which is I’m going to sacrifice some of the stability
1:42:28 in order to be able to add more volume. But the point was to allow you to work with the system.
1:42:35 And because when we first started aiming, you started aiming early on that distraction because
1:42:39 you weren’t yet there physically pulled you out of the process.
1:42:44 if we were to lay out step-by-step every single checkpoint that I go through or you go through,
1:42:46 I mean, I’d be here for three hours.
1:42:49 Yeah, we’d be here for three hours. It’s like 25 steps. I mean, I’m exaggerating a little bit,
1:42:49 but yeah.
1:42:52 25 steps for my hook.
1:42:57 Yeah. I mean, actually, you’re right. If I were to go through like every single checkpoint,
1:42:59 it’s like hundreds of hundreds.
1:43:06 Yeah, like a hundred checklist points for every shot. And until you have a critical mass of those
1:43:16 steps on autopilot, you cannot add more steps. And therefore, given the compressed timeline we were
1:43:21 dealing with, it was also like waiting for my nervous system to adapt. And for that reason,
1:43:25 like sometimes if you’re trying to grease the groove with a particular motor pattern, it’s like,
1:43:34 okay, lighter limbs are fine. Dial it down. And then, so in terms of my instinctive approach,
1:43:40 found a compromise was, all right, you’re not going to try to put the arrow tip or the crest of the arrow
1:43:46 on the bullseye. Again, for simplicity, just saying that. However, there are a few things you are going
1:43:52 to do. You’re going to burn a hole into the very center of the target with your eyes. And you’re going
1:43:59 to people think of shooting an arrow if they haven’t had a lot of experiences, like pulling back and
1:44:06 letting go. But you have this equal and opposite action in pushing forward with the bow hand. And
1:44:14 there’s a lot of technical detail that goes into how you do that. But basically pushing a portion of your
1:44:22 your palm, kind of the right next to your lifeline in the meaty pad of the thumb, let’s just say, roughly.
1:44:24 Kind of where your wrist meets your palm.
1:44:30 Yeah, exactly. And pushing that also, so you’re burning a hole into the target in a very dead center,
1:44:37 and you’re pushing that point on your palm also towards the exact center of the target.
1:44:42 despite whatever you’re seeing as far as your sight and your sight picture.
1:44:48 Right. So where you don’t worry about where the tip of the arrow is. And maybe I said it,
1:44:52 maybe you said, I can’t remember. I ended up calling this the Jesus takes the wheel approach,
1:44:59 you know, Jesus take the wheel. And it was shocking to see what happened because more often than not,
1:45:04 I would shoot better with that type of approach.
1:45:08 Yeah. And it worked surprisingly well.
1:45:09 It worked surprisingly well.
1:45:09 Until.
1:45:15 Yeah, it worked surprisingly well until. I guess we just decided, I mean, there were just,
1:45:20 it wasn’t reliable. I mean, to give you an idea, and this will mean more to people who have shot some
1:45:26 arrows, but when I was hitting, I had some pretty good scores. I mean, in practice, like, I don’t know.
1:45:28 Into the 270s, I believe.
1:45:30 Yeah, 270. So like 540.
1:45:37 270 out of 330. So decent. And the goal for where you were wanting to be was 252 plus.
1:45:38 Yeah.
1:45:41 So you were in excess of your score goal for Lancaster.
1:45:47 Yeah. I wanted to qualify for the top 64 shooters at Lancaster. We trained using my
1:45:53 Jesus take the wheel approach for up until a few weeks before Lancaster, because I was a little gun
1:45:58 shy after having so much trouble with trying to hold the point in one place.
1:46:02 And Jesus taking the wheel was working so well.
1:46:08 It was working really well until we started having really variable lighting conditions,
1:46:13 and we started dialing in the technique and the biomechanics for more precision.
1:46:20 And when we went to some test events, essentially. Not a test event per se, but like a local club
1:46:21 shoot to see how things are going.
1:46:27 Exactly. Yeah, that’s a great point. So, I mean, I don’t recommend this, guys. So if you can do a ton of
1:46:32 warm-up tournaments before the big tournament, I highly recommend doing that. Just didn’t really
1:46:38 work out that way. But we went to a number of league nights and it won two small events at
1:46:42 the Easton range in Salt Lake City, which is awesome.
1:46:47 I think you shot like Utah state shoots or something.
1:46:52 Yeah, I went in and basically just like audited the thing, right, to try to get competition
1:46:59 condition experience. And there are a few things that we noticed. So one is in that environment,
1:47:08 the bale, the canvas upon which you put the target, right, the backstop is black. And all of a sudden,
1:47:13 my eyes started doing funny things. And I couldn’t see the arrow tip as well. Now, the reason that’s
1:47:18 relevant is that I wasn’t trying to place the tip of the arrow in the center of the target, but I would
1:47:24 try to see it so that I could tell if I was roughly in the center of the target, right? So I would pay
1:47:25 attention to the left, right.
1:47:30 And just really quick for those that don’t know, with bare bow, you use the tip of your arrow as
1:47:36 your aiming reference. Part of the game is there is no sight. So you’re using the tip of the arrow
1:47:40 as your aiming reference. And then you’re placing that in a particular place every single time to
1:47:46 shoot a group in the middle. Exactly. So all of a sudden, and thank God we did these test events,
1:47:50 which I always have done in any other sport. Also, you just do not know what’s going to happen
1:47:55 and how you’re going to respond in competition conditions until you do it.
1:47:59 So there are a few things I think we did right. There are a lot of things we did right,
1:48:05 but doing those warmup tournaments, thank God, those were there. And with the black
1:48:07 bale, the black background that ended up…
1:48:12 It wasn’t just a black bale. It was also a black stand and the wall behind it was also black. It was
1:48:14 just all out, just dark.
1:48:21 It was dark. And so I could not reliably track because my arrow tip, people who have
1:48:26 done bare bow are going to find this funny. It was like three feet below the center of the target. I
1:48:27 mean, it was really, really low.
1:48:32 But you could still see it. I could still see it. Yeah. But it was hard to discern with that
1:48:39 particular black bale and everything around it. So what ended up happening in competition is I was
1:48:43 all over the place. Yeah. It wasn’t even just the black background that was different. It was also
1:48:48 the lighting condition too, because the light was very different compared to other places you shot in.
1:48:54 So the way you actually perceived objects in space was slightly different and you could not adjust.
1:48:56 It was all over the place, as you said. Yeah.
1:49:01 But the main thing was your first few shots were so low. Yep.
1:49:05 And with bare bow, we do what’s called string walking for those that don’t know.
1:49:09 String walking is essentially, you’re not pulling the string back right next to the arrow. You’re
1:49:15 actually going down the string, walking down the string, and that affects the trajectory of the
1:49:20 arrow. So you can essentially use the arrow point as your site. So you site in by walking up and down
1:49:26 the string. So to put it another way, if you had a site on your bow or on your gun or whatever,
1:49:29 you take some shots, assuming your technique is decent. And then based on where it, okay,
1:49:35 it landed bottom left. And then you adjust the site to move that point of impact. Correct.
1:49:39 Can’t do that in bare bow. Yeah. There’s no actual aiming reference.
1:49:44 Yeah. You’re not allowed to use a site. So what do you do? Well, the first thing is for left,
1:49:49 right, you do have something called the plunger and think of it just as kind of a screw that it’s much
1:49:55 more than that, but it pushes the arrow left or allows it to be more flush, right? So you can use
1:50:00 that to adjust your left, right. But how do you adjust your up down? Got a problem. Okay. Well,
1:50:07 the way you do that, and there are a lot of different approaches to this, but you’re crawling. So that means
1:50:13 means you’re using your thumb to basically move your fingers down from the back of the arrow
1:50:19 to, let’s just say, the further down you go, the further down on the target, it’s going to land and
1:50:26 so on. And it needs to be very precise. This is part of what makes bare bows so frustrating and so
1:50:32 difficult. Like if you’re, I mean, one millimeter, right? Like above or below a line.
1:50:37 So you have laser etched marks on your finger tab, the thing that protects your fingers from the
1:50:43 string, and it’s a flat piece of metal. And you were trying to be as precise enough to crawl to
1:50:47 the top of the laser etched line versus the bottom of the laser etched line. And it’s less than a
1:50:55 millimeter wide. Yeah. And that makes a difference in terms of point of impact. Yeah. Okay. So keeping all
1:51:02 this in mind, when I got into those lighting conditions with everything at play in competition,
1:51:06 it was a disaster. I mean, it was all over the place.
1:51:09 It was the worst score you had shot by a long shot.
1:51:14 Yeah. And I was like, oh, fuck me. This is three weeks, two weeks before Lancaster.
1:51:20 Yes. Maybe three, maybe three weeks out. Yeah. And I was like, well, keep this up. I’m definitely
1:51:25 not going to Lancaster because I will just, it’ll just be a complete clown car disaster.
1:51:28 Heather and I were looking at, my wife and I, we were looking at each other after that day
1:51:31 and we’re like, I really hope Tim still wants to go to Lancaster.
1:51:37 Yeah. That was the most frustrated. I think you guys have ever seen me. It was probably after that.
1:51:43 There was a lot of, uh, statements you were making in regards to never being on such an emotionally,
1:51:48 an emotional roller coaster from day to day. Yeah.
1:51:51 Because that timeframe was, was really challenging for you.
1:51:56 Oh, it was wild because I would go from one setting and we ended up shooting at a CrossFit gym from
1:52:03 seven 30 to like 10 30 at night. That was the only time and the only location that we could find.
1:52:09 And thank you to those guys. What a lifesaver. Chris Spieler. I think it was park city fit.
1:52:14 Amazing gym. The cleanest gym I’ve ever seen. It was like, yeah, you could eat off.
1:52:18 You could eat off the floor. It was incredible. So thank you to those guys. So we were training late
1:52:23 at night, very different lighting conditions, but I would have a day where I’m like, man,
1:52:30 I can’t miss. I can’t miss. I am so far above. I have so many more points than necessary that I need
1:52:37 to qualify for the top 64. Like it was your goal. Yeah. Even if I’m 10% off of this, I’m good. And then
1:52:43 went to this tournament or mock tournament on the, in the case of the league nights and it was unmitigated
1:52:48 disaster. Like a hundred points under what you wanted. Yeah. Yeah. And I was just like, what the hell is
1:52:53 going on? So the reason that I sometimes compare it to golf, even though I’ve only played golf a few
1:52:57 times, it’s like, you’re looking at this, you’re like, okay, there are a hundred different checkpoints.
1:53:03 Which one is it? If it’s even one of those hundred. Yeah. And that’s the detective work.
1:53:08 And so I’m looking at you and everything going down the list, try this, try this, try this, try this,
1:53:13 try this, try this. And then it’s like, maybe you should start aiming, I think. Yeah.
1:53:16 Because that’s really the only thing that we haven’t done up until this point.
1:53:20 Yeah, exactly. So we went through the list. It was like, nope, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail. All right.
1:53:24 So two weeks out and we start aiming and it started working.
1:53:30 Because you had developed your technique enough that you didn’t have that aiming distracting you
1:53:36 from the process, from what you needed to do. And a lot of that work that we did beforehand,
1:53:41 when you were instinctive aiming, I don’t think we really quite covered that, but instinctive aiming
1:53:44 is, you know, the tension and direction of the bow arm and just staring and burning a hole with
1:53:50 your eyes, but your subconscious brain like takes over and just makes the arrow land in the middle.
1:53:54 It’s like throwing a ball. You don’t have a sight to aim with when you throw something or throw an
1:53:59 object at something through repeated motion. You, you make adjustments and you don’t even do that
1:54:03 consciously. Same thing with archery when you’re shooting instinctive per se.
1:54:10 And there’s some amazing instinctive shooters. They don’t tend to go to competition for reasons we can
1:54:16 get into. But for instance, I don’t want to name him. I don’t want to dox him, but this amazing guy from
1:54:24 Albania at one range I went to, and this guy all day long with his hunting bow, like a trad hunting bow made
1:54:31 out of wood, just drilling the center of this target for two hours straight, every time I saw,
1:54:36 and he would kind of pull back. And then as soon as he got his finger to the corner of his mouth,
1:54:42 he would release. And that was it. And the guy’s just a beast. I mean, incredibly good.
1:54:47 So we finally started aiming and I want to mention a couple of other things that I think were key to
1:54:53 ultimately being very happy with performance at Lancaster, even though, of course, I always wanted to do
1:55:04 better. But the first I would say is standardizing a handful of things. So obviously the shot sequence
1:55:14 and anchor and aiming system and all of that. The second was experimenting in mock tournament conditions,
1:55:20 because we also discovered, for instance, that when we went from, we upgraded from a very, very narrow
1:55:26 arrow. So the shaft of the arrow, and therefore the head of the arrow as well, in this particular case,
1:55:32 because they’re not broadheads or anything, going from a very, very thin arrow to a maximum allowable
1:55:37 javelin sized arrow. And what’s the reason for that?
1:55:43 So basically in archery, when you touch the higher scoring ring where your arrow lands, you get the
1:55:48 higher value. So all you have to do is touch that ring. You don’t have to break the line. You don’t
1:55:52 even have to be inside out. You just have to touch it. And that’s enough to get you the higher score.
1:55:59 And statistically speaking, somebody did a study and analysis of scores across the board at indoor
1:56:04 archery tournaments. And if you’re in that range of score, where you were actually targeting to be,
1:56:10 to be at Lancaster, there’s a very statistically significant impact on your score going up by a
1:56:16 tremendous amount. I think it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of eight plus points every 30 shots,
1:56:24 which is a massive jump at that 280, 270 range. Somewhere in there, the bigger arrows make statistically
1:56:28 speaking a huge difference at the highest level. The guys that win the tournaments when they’re
1:56:35 shooting say one or two points down from perfect, they do not make any difference at all. Like
1:56:41 statistically it’s, it’s a zero sum. There’s no, no additional benefit to shooting the fat arrows,
1:56:44 but for me, but for you statistically it made sense.
1:56:48 Yeah. It made a lot of sense. What that meant though, is we had to adjust a bunch of the gear.
1:56:58 When you put the arrow on your bow, I’ll just keep it simple. You have an arrow rest. And we had an
1:57:05 arrow rest that had been working great. Fantastic. It had been working so well with the little tiny darts
1:57:13 that I had been using once we put the much heavier arrows on. And I mean, I guess, uh,
1:57:17 what is the model of those arrows? So the arrows you were using was the Easton RX seven. And before
1:57:24 that you were using a Easton advance, I don’t know how to say it. Basically you went from an arrow that
1:57:32 was smaller than the diameter of your average pen or pencil to a something that was three pens combined,
1:57:36 almost. Oh yeah. As far as the diameter is concerned. So big, big difference there.
1:57:39 Yeah. And, uh, and much heavier. Yes. Right. Not just a heavier arrow,
1:57:46 but also a heavier point because there’s a lot of technical stuff here, but as an archer, you want
1:57:51 your arrow to fly perfect and you can adjust parameters of the arrow, the stiffness of the arrow,
1:57:57 how resistant it is to bending the point weight, the knock weight, the fletching size, the arrow length,
1:58:02 all sorts of things to make the arrow work with the bow. So they fly perfectly straight because
1:58:07 ultimately you don’t want it to have a tendency to go one direction. You want it to have like a
1:58:10 forgiveness. So if you make a mistake, it’s not going to deviate far from the middle.
1:58:17 And what we discovered when I did my, I guess it was probably the first time I did the tournament
1:58:23 conditions, a few things. Number one, my instinctive shooting was not going to work. Right. It was all
1:58:27 over the place. On top of that, with the much thicker arrows, which are much heavier,
1:58:34 the arrow rest, which in this case is a fall away, it was a fall away rest. What was the model on this?
1:58:41 So for those bare bow listeners out there, it is the sniper arrow rest, Z-N-I-P-E-R. So it is a
1:58:48 magnetically controlled drop away arrow rest. So for those that don’t know archery, a drop away arrow
1:58:54 rest is a rest that holds the arrow and supports it when you’re at full draw. But the moment you let go,
1:58:59 it snaps down out of the way to give the arrow, the maximum amount of clearance as it’s going by the
1:59:05 bow for bare bow. You use it because of the awful flight of the arrow that happens due to string
1:59:09 walking. When you go down the string and you don’t pull it straight back. So what was happening was,
1:59:15 and this is not a design flaw of that rest. It’s just, we literally hit the absolute limitations of
1:59:20 the system because you have to make it stiff enough, hard enough to drop, to hold the arrow up. So you
1:59:26 don’t accidentally bump it when you’re moving around, but you want it to be soft enough. So it drops when
1:59:31 you let go of the string. And because the arrow was heavy and more importantly, the point weight was
1:59:38 so heavy, it was not dropping. Yeah. So also bare bow shooters that are listening, we were using the 2315
1:59:45 size RX seven. So the stiff 420 versions, the 420 spine versions, and we had to run heavy point weights
1:59:52 to break the spine down. Ideally we should have run the 21 size arrows. I believe that I forget the exact
1:59:57 spine. I think it’s 570 or somewhere in there, much weaker. And we should have shot those light
2:00:03 point weights, but I don’t know if they are even available yet. They are or were on back order at
2:00:07 the time. So I couldn’t get you the arrow for the lighter point weight. So we literally just hit a
2:00:13 roadblock of the arrow rest, not working with that arrow setup. And how much can it change your impact
2:00:19 the 20 yards if the arrow rest does not fall? Six inches. Yeah. So if, if not more. Yeah. Game
2:00:23 over. Yeah. That’s it. You’re done. Yeah. You’re 10 ring again. So that’s part of the reason. Yeah.
2:00:31 In addition to my instinctive aiming, completely shitting the bed and not working given all the factors
2:00:38 we’ve already talked about, I’d say one out of every four shots maybe was, was not falling.
2:00:43 And so mentally you’re struggling with the aiming. Yeah. Then all of a sudden the equipment’s not
2:00:50 working. So it’s just adding insult to injury and it’s just making this mental struggle so much worse.
2:00:57 Yeah. So I should highlight that it, there are so many reasons in any sport to mimic or rehearse
2:01:02 competition conditions. But in the case of archery, one is you want to get used to being crowded,
2:01:07 right? If you’re training by yourself, it’s not the way it works at any of these larger tournaments.
2:01:11 Like you’re going to be on a line and literally could have somebody, I don’t know how far away
2:01:17 were folks for with me? Uh, less than a foot, less than a foot probably in front of me and behind me.
2:01:21 Correct. And I mean, you just want to hope if you’re right-handed, you don’t have a left-handed
2:01:26 person right next to you on your right side. Cause you’re going to basically be eye gazing them the
2:01:31 whole time. It’s really distracting. Although I encouraged you during your training at Gotham,
2:01:35 find a left-handed guy and stand right in front of them. Yeah. Yeah, totally. So I did that.
2:01:42 Yeah. So I had the practice. That is one reason. Another is to see what happens to your mental state
2:01:46 if and when, I guess it’s not really if, I mean, at my level, when you make mistakes.
2:01:52 At my level too. Yeah. It’s like, what happens? Yeah. Right. And those play poker. Like,
2:01:59 do you go tilt, monkey tilt? Like how bad does it get? And can you recover if and when that happens?
2:02:07 And I was just like, the wheels came off. Yeah. Yeah, it did. The wheels came off. I was like,
2:02:12 aren’t you stupid? Fuck this game. I didn’t say that, but I think you did inside, inside. I was
2:02:20 definitely, I was not happy. And then it was really, I think a combination of, I mentioned a few things.
2:02:27 We talked about the tournament conditions and with each mock tournament or league night that I did,
2:02:32 the scores went up. So everything was trending in the right direction. And I was trying to, I mean, I
2:02:39 used AI and all these tools to find every possible shop within an hour and a half driving distance.
2:02:44 And what kind of targets are they using? Can I bring my own target? Which we ended up doing,
2:02:49 right? Yeah. You went and shot a blue and white face league night, an NFA league night and shot a
2:02:53 colored face. So instead of shooting the five arrows that everyone else shot, you were shooting three
2:02:59 arrows. I was running a timer manually behind you, keeping tabs on, you know, your actual pacing,
2:03:04 because within tournaments, like a simple little added change is just a time limitation. And even though
2:03:08 you may never even remotely come close to running out of time, just knowing that there’s a time
2:03:12 limitation is enough to make you panic. Well, that’s another thing that happened to me,
2:03:18 right? Yeah. So given, let’s just say, you know, six months of serious practice. Now it’s like two
2:03:26 weeks out starting to aim. And I still have a lot that is manual. It’s not yet automatic. So I am a
2:03:31 pretty slow shooter. Well, because you have to think through everything. Yeah. Yeah. And so how much time
2:03:35 do you have for how many shots? You have two minutes to shoot three arrows. Yeah. Which sounds like a lot.
2:03:40 There was often times you were had three to five seconds left, which is not a good feeling to see
2:03:46 the timer. And it’s like, what happens when it goes from green to yellow? Yeah. And so 30 seconds
2:03:51 less a yellow light comes on. That’s way brighter than the green light. Green is meaning you’re just
2:03:55 standard time left. And what happens to a lot of people, what happened to me initially is I would
2:04:00 rush through that shot and let it rip. And I would still have 15 seconds left, but I rushed it and it
2:04:05 would not be a good shot. It was a change to your process. Yeah. All right. So other things,
2:04:11 mentioned standardizing as much as possible. So one was, and look, guys, I’m not proud of this,
2:04:19 but I’ll admit it. Figuring out expedient fuel that you can get or bring with you everywhere,
2:04:23 right? Especially with the amount of travel I was doing, that was actually very good practice. And it’s
2:04:30 like, okay, let me know how much caffeine I can tolerate. What am I going to use? Does it help at
2:04:35 all? Because oodles and oodles of liquid anxiety does not help you shoot better, which is why also
2:04:40 I beta blockers are not allowed in competition unless you get deliberately fat enough that you have a
2:04:44 prescription for them. That’s a whole separate story. There are actually people who do that,
2:04:49 just like the sprinters in the Olympics who, oh my God, happened to all be narcoleptics so they can take
2:04:55 modafinil. What a coincidence. All right. Putting all that aside. So what does that mean? That means that I
2:05:01 wanted to be able to fuel myself from things I could get at any convenience store, almost any gas
2:05:09 station. So it would be some form of basic protein. Don’t judge me, but maybe it’s like muscle milk or
2:05:17 whatever. And then having almonds. I had tolerated Maui Nui venison sticks really well. We knew that I
2:05:23 could digest that reasonably quickly. So always traveling with that. Then figured out a couple of other
2:05:27 things. So I’ll give a couple of shout outs because these products end up being really, really helpful.
2:05:34 So Peak Tea, P-I-Q-U-E, which are basically, if you think about matcha as whole leaf, these are
2:05:39 pu-erh, oolong, they’re all whole leaf. They’re powdered, so you can mix them instantly.
2:05:40 Even in cold water.
2:05:41 Even in cold water.
2:05:41 Yeah.
2:05:48 Even if you’re combining it with other things. So I figured out the timing for using that, using
2:05:55 glutamine, which is incredibly cheap. And I use momentous glutamine, also the next one I’ll talk
2:06:03 about. And for muscle recovery and soreness, it is incredibly effective. I wrote about this in The
2:06:07 4-Hour Body. I know you were pretty skeptical at first of the glutamine.
2:06:10 I mean, the amount you were taking was insane.
2:06:10 Yeah, it was a lot.
2:06:16 After doing a little bit of research on my own with the help of Heather, we saw that it was good
2:06:21 for people with leaky gut syndrome at very high doses. So if it’s okay for that, then it’s got to
2:06:26 be all right for the overall GI system, right? So it’s like, let’s give it a try. And we started trying
2:06:32 it as well after seeing you pretty much take an entire bottle of it in a day. Well, it actually
2:06:34 makes a massive difference for muscle soreness.
2:06:35 And it’s amazing.
2:06:41 Yeah, it’s wild. So I would say when we were doing hard training and look, talk to your medical
2:06:46 professional, I’m not giving medical advice here, but I was using a scoop, which is say five grams of
2:06:55 creatine three or four times over the course of a full training session, I would say. And then what
2:07:01 we figured out reasonably late, this was a lucky discovery, ended up playing around because I had used
2:07:08 this actually on very, very long hikes, which is something called fuel also by Momentus. And that is
2:07:20 a combination of electrolytes and let’s just call them more slowly digested carbohydrate and a handful of
2:07:28 other things. But it’s basically like Bugatti Kool-Aid for mental and physical performance. And it was visibly
2:07:35 noticeable when I was on this cocktail and when I was not. I’d start getting shaky. And then if I had,
2:07:40 and I timed this, I had everything on a schedule and I knew how long it took me to digest. Because
2:07:44 the last thing you want to do is have like three protein bars and then get up to shoot and you have
2:07:45 all this blood in your stomach.
2:07:52 Or even worse, a crash. And then you’re like, oh, emergency fuel. How long does it take to come back
2:07:58 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So figuring all that out was key. And I would just travel. Like I would have the
2:08:03 fuel, the glutamine, the peak. I would have bottles of water so I could mix all of that on my own with
2:08:13 a shaker bottle. And these ended up being, I think, really key to also reducing the decision fatigue and
2:08:16 possibility for logistics challenges. For sure.
2:08:24 And that’s why with Lancaster, like most high-level competitors, how early, like how far
2:08:28 before their first shooting do they arrive at Lancaster?
2:08:30 Most pro shooters?
2:08:30 Yeah.
2:08:34 45 minutes, half hour, an hour.
2:08:37 Right, but when would their plane land?
2:08:39 Oh, sorry. A few days.
2:08:40 Yeah.
2:08:44 You know, well, it depends. Depends on the season. Because if the season’s really crammed in,
2:08:49 you may land the night before the competition starts because one just ended somewhere across the world.
2:08:50 Yep.
2:08:54 But ideally, you’d try to get there a couple days early. So that way you shake off the jet lag,
2:08:58 you get used to the bed, you just get used to where everything’s laid out. And you know,
2:09:01 you kind of just see how things are going.
2:09:02 But if you’ve been to the event before.
2:09:03 How early did we get there?
2:09:06 10 days, 12 days early, I think. Something like that.
2:09:12 Yeah. And so again, this is just, if it’s helpful for folks, I do this whenever I’m
2:09:16 competing in anything new, right? So figure out where you are, figure out your food options,
2:09:22 figure out your bed. For instance, I slept really poorly on the hotel mattress. So ordered a pillow
2:09:26 topper, got that all figured out. Where are we going to practice?
2:09:29 How long does it take to drive from your hotel to the venue?
2:09:31 Right. How does that differ with different times of day?
2:09:34 Yep. And what does it look like, the venue?
2:09:39 So we did a lot of different things too. We went to the venue early and checked it out after hours
2:09:43 when no one was there. We’re the only ones walking around except for the Zamboni cleaning the floor.
2:09:44 Yeah.
2:09:48 Right. And so we’re checking it out. And so you get an idea of what the field looks like,
2:09:49 what the lighting looks like, where the bathroom’s located.
2:09:51 Figuring out where the bathrooms are.
2:09:56 This is not a small thing, right? Because when you’re shooting at this particular tournament,
2:10:02 on each bail, you have four targets, A, B, C, D. So you’re shooting with three other people,
2:10:09 you all score one another, and I’m simplifying things a little bit, but basically you’re switching back
2:10:13 and forth. Two people shoot, and then the next two people shoot, and then the next people shoot,
2:10:19 you alternate back and forth. So you may not have a whole lot of time to get to the bathroom. How
2:10:24 crowded is the bathroom, right? Where is the least crowded bathroom? Where’s the secret bathroom?
2:10:25 Yep.
2:10:29 I’m figuring all this out ahead of time, because I recognize, look, I don’t have a lot of time under
2:10:34 my belt. I’ve trained my ass off to the extent that my body would handle it. I pushed my body,
2:10:42 and I do need to give a huge thank you to Heather, who is a top-tier manual therapist,
2:10:48 magician with soft tissue, and no way that I could have made it to Lancaster without her help.
2:10:50 Yeah, you were on the ragged edge.
2:10:57 I was run pretty ragged. Yeah. I mean, I had kinesiology tape all over me. A couple of other
2:11:01 recovery tools that were really helpful. One, I really didn’t anticipate because I had no exposure
2:11:07 to it, but this is, I guess, full-spectrum cannabis oil. Was it Rick Simpson?
2:11:13 Yeah, R-S-O. Rick Simpson oil, I believe, is the name of the guy that came up with this.
2:11:19 And what was fascinating for me, you do not feel any psychoactive effects whatsoever. Topical,
2:11:21 to be clear. Topical, yes. It does not cross the blood-brain barrier.
2:11:23 Not suppositories. Yeah, no.
2:11:25 Don’t fall for the marketing campaigns for the archery.
2:11:26 No.
2:11:30 THC suppositories. And you don’t feel any psychoactive effect. Obviously,
2:11:36 do not break the law where you live, so pay attention. But in terms of reducing or eliminating
2:11:43 muscle spasms, incredible, incredibly effective. And also, if you’re going to get, let’s just say,
2:11:49 massage therapy, do not get, necessarily, Heather would be able to speak more intelligently to this,
2:11:54 but incredibly deep, hardcore work right before you’re going to train. I mean, there are different
2:11:56 types of massage for flushing.
2:11:56 Sure.
2:12:01 Yeah. You don’t want to overly lengthen the muscle, because then you can lead that
2:12:07 joint that it’s supporting or around to become potentially unstable, which results in a potential,
2:12:10 serious potential for an injury to the joint, like an actual injury.
2:12:13 Yeah. You can also get really sore, as I was saying.
2:12:15 Increase your inflammation.
2:12:21 Which does not help with anything, right? My main issue was, like, my shoulder or my wrist or
2:12:27 my forearms would just be on fire. They’d be all swollen like a puffer fish.
2:12:27 Sure.
2:12:28 And it’s like, okay, sure.
2:12:29 This is our first day of four days of training.
2:12:30 Sure.
2:12:31 We need to fix this.
2:12:32 How do we fix this?
2:12:40 From an outsider’s perspective, it was fascinating to see with unlimited ability to just make things
2:12:47 happen, what you can do to maximize your potential to perform. So what can you control? Can you get
2:12:54 that bed topper? Can you get there 10 days early? Can you see the venue? Can you have the Bugatti of
2:13:00 electrolytes? Can you get the things that actually make a difference and have you experimented enough
2:13:06 leading up to the event to know how you respond? And if you take enough detailed notes, you know
2:13:10 exactly how you’re going to respond. What is the lag time? What is the delay? How many days
2:13:15 days after I shoot this 300-arrow day, am I going to be sore and unable to shoot properly?
2:13:15 Exactly.
2:13:17 So many different things.
2:13:24 And actually, this is as good a point as any to mention the glue that holds us all together,
2:13:28 which is note-taking and training logs.
2:13:29 Yes, entirely.
2:13:29 Right?
2:13:36 This is such a pivotal thing to consistently performing under pressure. You might get hot once
2:13:40 and shoot great and win a tournament, but if you didn’t know what you did that led up to that,
2:13:46 how are you going to repeat it? And so you have to blueprint, as Joel says in his system,
2:13:53 the shot IQ, how do you blueprint an ideal shot or an ideal tournament? And leading up to that,
2:13:57 a training session, whatever it may be, what can you do to replicate that every time?
2:14:02 Yep. And a few things that were surprising to me, for instance, if I felt like I’d just been put
2:14:09 through a meat grinder, I would maybe, left to my own devices, look back one training session,
2:14:16 maybe two training sessions, but often it’s five days ago, five training sessions ago. You have to
2:14:20 look back further than I would have expected. That is going to be beyond your memory.
2:14:25 For sure. How many arrows did you shoot? Yeah. What did you do that day? Did you strength train
2:14:30 as well? How about massage therapy? What did you eat? Whatever it is, you’ve got to know. If you
2:14:35 don’t know, you’re guessing. Yeah, exactly. And also, we’re mentioning a lot of these different things.
2:14:39 Most of these are not expensive in the grand scheme of things. Correct.
2:14:45 I mean, the only one that might be out of range that I used quite a bit is the low intensity continuous
2:14:52 ultrasound. Sure. There are these devices that basically put a very light ultrasound stimulus
2:14:57 through these electrodes. And there’s a SAM device. There are a number of other ones that is
2:15:03 Lycus, L-I-C-U-S, low intensity continuous ultrasound. People can look it up. That one’s a
2:15:09 little pricey, but there’s a whole lot you can do that is not expensive. Almost everything I’ve mentioned
2:15:14 is well within reach. I mean, you’re doing it right now. You got a pen and a paper.
2:15:19 Yeah. That’s like the weapon right there. You know, that is so important. I’ve encouraged so
2:15:25 many people I work with that come to me for coaching to take detailed notes. And I can’t
2:15:30 tell you how few do. And you’re the only one that I’ve ever seen take a sufficient level of detail of
2:15:36 notes on how the training session went, what you did, and how you ultimately felt. And then just being
2:15:40 able to look back and see. I can’t tell you how many times you pulled it out and said, “Let me look back to
2:15:45 San Diego when I went and visited Coach Lee and he told me to go away after 45 minutes. Oh yeah,
2:15:48 this is what we worked on. Interesting. Okay. Let’s make sure I’m doing that today.”
2:15:49 Yeah, totally.
2:15:50 That’s a few months later or more than that.
2:15:57 Yeah. Yeah. That ended up being such an important key to everything. And I would log the workout,
2:16:01 give you just a couple of tips. I mean, this is going to seem really rudimentary and it’s like,
2:16:06 yeah, duh, but very few people do it. When did you work out? When did you do your training?
2:16:11 Time of day. Yeah. When was your last meal prior to that? Write this stuff down. You are not going
2:16:18 to remember. And then going through training, it’s like, well, if you had a period of shooting really
2:16:24 poorly and then you tested a number of things to fix it, what happened? So for instance, that pulling back
2:16:32 on the pinky of the bowhand ended up being something. When I got fatigued, I would start to lose that
2:16:37 tension and it would have a whole cascade of negative effects. And I was like, okay, interesting.
2:16:44 For whatever reason, that cue seems to fix a lot. And there were a handful of things that you’re only
2:16:50 going to discover if you are taking those types of notes. And I think this applies to way more than
2:16:57 archery. If you’re not really paying attention to what you’re doing and maximizing your chances for
2:17:02 success and ultimately maintaining what you’re doing and training or leading up to an event,
2:17:07 whatever it may be, if you change everything at the event, because I’m at the event, I should
2:17:12 probably clean up my diet. Why would you do that? It’s too late. It’s too late. If you’re eating Cheetos
2:17:16 at home, as much as you shouldn’t be eating Cheetos at home, you should probably just do it at the
2:17:21 tournament. If you drink seven up or you have a beer the night before or whatever it is, you should
2:17:25 probably continue to do that. You don’t want to all of a sudden sober up at the event and deal with
2:17:29 withdrawal syndromes from not having enough sugar because you used to have cap and crunch for
2:17:35 breakfast. I don’t know, whatever it may be, you might want to just maintain the same thing. And so
2:17:41 this applies to so many things, not just archery. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And also if it’s helpful to
2:17:46 people, when I would take notes, I mean, you can even kind of, I won’t show off all this because
2:17:53 some of these are top secret in this one, but I also basically draw a little square. You’ve seen
2:17:57 these in the bottom right of each page in this training log. And my training log is actually
2:18:02 like this big, it’s larger paper. It’s like bigger than an eight and a half by 11. Yeah.
2:18:10 It’s, it’s a large notebook. And in that bottom right corner, I, so I’m not only taking notes,
2:18:17 I’m also reviewing all of those notes after the session. And in the bottom right, I am putting my
2:18:25 next actions or key takeaways to focus on for the next workout. And so when I land at the gym,
2:18:31 or in this case, the range, the next day or two days later, I know exactly where I’m picking up.
2:18:35 I do not have to spend any time on that. All right. So we’re doing all this stuff,
2:18:42 chugging muscle milks and fuel and glutamine and peak tea and learning to aim.
2:18:42 Yes.
2:18:43 Like a big boy.
2:18:44 Yes.
2:18:51 Then what happens at Lancaster? What’s the goal? Were the expectations, hopes, like from your
2:18:52 perspective, I’d be curious to hear.
2:18:57 I would say my number one hope was just that you’d be happy with how it went, no matter what,
2:19:02 because ultimately there’s no way to know how it’s going to go. Would it be great if you made the cut?
2:19:09 Would it be great if you won the event? Sure. That’d be cool. But how is it going to go? No one knows.
2:19:14 Competition is very interesting. It really is. It’s just unknown until you do it.
2:19:20 Just a quick side note. So I remember, I don’t want to mention his name, but I was training somewhere
2:19:28 and I saw my first barebow shooter who was, in my eyes, really good. And in practice, just incredible.
2:19:31 And do you remember what you said to me after that?
2:19:32 I can tell you.
2:19:34 Go for it.
2:19:35 Practice scores don’t matter.
2:19:35 Oh, yeah.
2:19:44 Now, on some level, consistent practice scores are one indicator, but competition is just a different…
2:19:44 It’s a totally different animal.
2:19:45 Different animal.
2:19:52 And so you can expect to falter. You hope to do well. But ultimately, it’s looking at where you were,
2:19:56 you really hit rock bottom three weeks before the event, right?
2:20:02 So from there, there was an upward trajectory and you were heading in the right direction.
2:20:06 So that’s a lot of stuff that I remember I was reminding you about. You’re headed in the right
2:20:10 direction. You just have to maintain your focus on these things. Do not get distracted by anything
2:20:15 else. Each arrow is its own. You give it the care that it deserves. The arrow that you just shot does
2:20:20 not affect the next. And the arrow that you’re about to shoot doesn’t affect anything. It’s just its own
2:20:26 individual thing. Treat it with care. It’s a 60 arrow round, not a one arrow round. So it’s really
2:20:30 unimportant what happens on each individual arrow. Ultimately, it’s how you control the whole event,
2:20:37 how you maintain focus, whatever it may be. Just composure ultimately is what’s required to succeed.
2:20:41 It’s not about being perfect. It’s just about maintaining what you do in practice better than
2:20:46 the next guy. That’s who wins. And so that was just the main focus that I was trying to hammer home
2:20:50 to really say, this is what you need to lean into and avoid any of this other distracting
2:20:55 thoughts. It’s not Lancaster. It’s nothing. It’s just another venue. You’re just shooting arrows.
2:21:00 Nobody’s interfering with you. It’s you and the bow and no one else. So ultimately nobody’s going to
2:21:06 prevent you from succeeding or failing except for yourself. So you just got to get out of your own
2:21:10 way and let it happen. You’ve already put in the time you put in the effort. Just go have fun.
2:21:12 Just shoot some arrows and maintain composure.
2:21:21 Of course I was nervous, but I also came into it feeling like I cannot imagine with the limitations
2:21:28 that I have having taken this more seriously. Like I’ve done the prep I was humanly capable of doing.
2:21:35 So ultimately it was just, there was no expectations. I don’t like to have expectations when it comes to
2:21:40 competition because it’s just, it adds a level of pressure, distraction.
2:21:47 Yeah. Well, I can also say for myself, I hadn’t done a proper large competition in a super long time, right?
2:21:48 You said 20 years.
2:21:58 20 years, 20 plus years. And for me, I was so curious. I’m like, is that gear going to click?
2:22:02 Is there going to be another gear? And ultimately there was, and I was very happy to see it because
2:22:04 I had not seen it in the mock tournaments.
2:22:07 No, me neither for the record.
2:22:15 Yeah. And part of that though, for me was, okay, now this is a real competition, right? This is what
2:22:21 we’ve been training for. Adding extra pressure to myself now, much like changing your diet last minute
2:22:28 is not going to help. The training has been done. And so coming into it, I don’t even know if I’ve told
2:22:35 you guys this, maybe I did, but I basically just told myself, this is just treat this like training
2:22:40 with distraction. That’s it. This is just another training session with a lot of distractions.
2:22:40 It’s healthy.
2:22:48 And I have had my best competition performances, whether it was, you know, going to the worlds
2:22:56 in tango or the national championships in Sancho Chinese kickboxing when I’ve done that and having
2:23:06 high hopes certainly, but the mental prep that I did for that was my pass fail here is not the score.
2:23:11 It’s how well I can recover and keep my calm.
2:23:11 Exactly.
2:23:16 That was it. And I was like, okay, I have a lot of room for improvement because I remember
2:23:22 throwing a tantrum of epic proportions when everything went sideways at Easton.
2:23:22 Yeah.
2:23:23 In fairness, that was pretty rough.
2:23:24 It was rough.
2:23:25 That was rough.
2:23:25 Yeah.
2:23:27 Yeah. I felt bad too.
2:23:28 Yeah. It was bad.
2:23:29 Yeah.
2:23:34 It was really bad. And I was like, okay, so this is it. This is like a meditation practice.
2:23:44 And success is viewing it as training with distraction and just keeping calm. And if I
2:23:46 get excited, that’s okay. Just like reeling it back in.
2:23:47 Everyone’s going to get it.
2:23:53 So Heather was sitting there with a mutual friend and what Heather was saying is she was looking
2:23:57 at me and she’s like, wow, Tim is overstimulated. And it’s very easy to be overstimulated there.
2:23:58 I mean, it’s-
2:23:59 So loud.
2:24:03 It’s so loud. It is a cavernous space. There are how many shooters?
2:24:07 I mean, there was close to 600 shooters on the line at one time.
2:24:12 Yeah. And what Heather was saying is that when I crossed the line to straddle the line to
2:24:16 shoot, there was just this like calm that washed over me. And she was saying that-
2:24:19 I mean, you were just high-eyed walking around.
2:24:20 Yeah. My eyes were-
2:24:21 Beforehand.
2:24:22 Saucers beforehand.
2:24:26 And the moment, yeah, the moment you crossed, it was just like, this is what I do.
2:24:26 Yeah.
2:24:27 This is how it’s going to go.
2:24:33 And it was just, it was the first time, genuinely the first time where it was just like you held
2:24:34 your shit together.
2:24:36 Yeah. So that was an experience.
2:24:36 Yeah.
2:24:41 And I was like, oh, oh yeah, I’ve done this before. Because I guess, and we’ll get to
2:24:47 this, but it’s like historically, like I know I don’t have a technical advantage over everyone
2:24:48 there. Some of these guys have been shooting forever.
2:24:49 Yeah.
2:24:55 Right. And I was like, okay, well, how can I try to stack the deck? And we already talked
2:25:03 about a lot, right? Nutrition, sleep, taking away handicaps that I can easily remove. Then
2:25:09 I was like, okay, well, being consistent for 60 arrows, which means trying to contain the
2:25:17 fluctuations in energy and also contain the fluctuations in emotional reaction. And I remember
2:25:22 taking the first few shots and I’m standing on the line and there’s a person 12 inches
2:25:27 in front of me and sweet, sweet people, but her arrows are sticking out and literally jabbing
2:25:34 me in the stomach like the, you know, the knocks, the back of the arrow. And I’m like, well, that’s
2:25:39 distracting. And then there’s a guy right behind me who has a huge longbow. He’s in the longbow
2:25:44 division and he’s holding it sideways right in front of me. So I can’t even lift my bow.
2:25:51 Meanwhile, the timer’s going, right? And I’m like, oh man. Okay. But then I was able to,
2:25:58 I think in part from visiting the venue, in part from doing the Easton comp prep and having the
2:26:06 black bales, which they also had at Lancaster, walking in that late night when the Zamboni was
2:26:11 there because it’s indoor lighting to see what the lighting is like, let my eyes kind of adjust and
2:26:18 feel it out. Not worrying about the bathroom, not worrying about nutrition. And it took a little bit
2:26:26 of shooting to, to get comfortable with the process and the turnaround speed from one pair to the next
2:26:33 pair shooting on the same bail. But ultimately ended up with a, I think it was exactly 500 points,
2:26:38 right? I think so. Yeah. I think it was exactly, look, somebody could find it online. It’s easy
2:26:44 enough to find, but ended up with 500 points. That’s not anywhere close to my practice high
2:26:49 scores, but that’s fine. But it was my best tournament scoring. And you’re most importantly,
2:26:54 in my opinion, the best performance you’ve had. It’s not about the outcome. It’s about the performance.
2:27:00 Yeah. If I shoot beautifully in my opinion and someone else out shoot me, I have to be happy
2:27:04 with that. I did the best I can. What does that mean? I think I’d have to go back and look. I don’t
2:27:10 know what number. I think you were 80th something. 80 something. 80s in there. Yeah. So you’re, you know,
2:27:16 not quite at 64 where you wanted to be, but. It was really fun. And just the fact that I didn’t
2:27:24 lose it, right? Irrecoverably was a huge highlight. And also we ended up, because I’m a glutton for
2:27:29 punishment, you know, doing, I guess it was the next day, maybe, maybe it was a day later, but doing a
2:27:34 bunch of practice. Yeah. And figuring some stuff out where it’s like, oh, okay. Yep. I feel like
2:27:41 automatically some of these tweaks. Yep. Would lead to a higher score. Sure. And if I can basically just
2:27:46 get my practice scores closer to my competition scores, or maybe you frame it the other way,
2:27:53 then if I’m able to maintain my composure, it’s like, okay. Like I think certainly like a 540 or
2:27:59 something like that is, should be enough to get into the top 64 for sure. You would think so. You would
2:28:03 think so. Yeah. So great experience. Thanks so much for the amazing coaching. Heather, thank you for
2:28:10 keeping my body in one piece. And I’m just trying to think of what else we could mention just in terms of
2:28:19 approach or anything else that’s worth adding. I think, you know, one approach maybe, and this
2:28:25 particularly given some of my orthopedic issues and just like tendinosis limitations and so on,
2:28:30 this isn’t totally right. And I’ll explain the modification, but this actually comes from a very
2:28:38 famous track coach with many, many world records to his athletes credit. Hank Kreigenhoff or something
2:28:42 like that. I believe he’s Dutch. I’m sure I’m messing up that, but it’s in the four-hour body if people are
2:28:49 looking for the actual name. And he said, effectively, my goal is to do the least necessary, not the most
2:28:59 possible. And the way that ties into the training is I found if I really, really overdid it, then I might
2:29:04 need four or five days off. If my shoulder’s really inflamed and problematic. So it’s like, okay,
2:29:10 how can we use smaller doses with higher frequency to make this work?
2:29:16 Ultimately, that’s super beneficial in archery. So if I were to wave a magic wand and try to make
2:29:22 things better the next time, it would be doing archery more often. So it’s not about how many
2:29:28 arrows you do in one session. It’s how many sessions in a week can you do and how many days in between each
2:29:34 session are there? Anything more than one is too many, in my opinion. So if you could standardize
2:29:41 your schedule better, better for the sake of archery performance, that of course requires sacrifice
2:29:47 elsewhere. Time hanging out, time working, whatever it may be. It’s a challenge.
2:29:52 I mean, for the competition, I mean, that was a commitment, right? Because it was like, unless my
2:30:00 body failed for a period of time, which happened with alarming regularity, but I mean, certainly when
2:30:07 we’re looking at the training in Utah and a lot of other places, I mean, certainly in person, I mean,
2:30:10 it was kind of like two and a half to three hour sessions.
2:30:15 It was intense sessions. And in Tim’s famous last words, one more end.
2:30:20 One more end. Yeah. One more end. It’s like, well, one more bunch of arrows. And I’d be like,
2:30:20 one more end.
2:30:20 Okay.
2:30:21 Three hours later.
2:30:25 All right. One more end. Three hours later. Okay. One more end. Yeah. One more end. Which by
2:30:30 the way, that ended up for solo training being important to me because you gave me the advice
2:30:36 of, and this might sound a little counterintuitive, but not setting a minimum number of arrows you need
2:30:40 to shoot, but a maximum number of arrows. And it’s like, when you hit that, you’re done.
2:30:45 Yes. No matter what, no matter if it’s your best day ever and you cannot miss, and you’re just
2:30:49 enjoying archery more than you’ve ever enjoyed in your entire life, you have to stop.
2:30:55 But also if you’re struggling, you’ve got to push towards that upper end of that limit
2:30:57 because of you need to put in the reps.
2:31:03 Where I got into trouble was, let’s just say I wanted to shoot a hundred arrows as a minimum.
2:31:10 And I would go, if I were shooting poorly and I got to a hundred, I’d be like, I’m not ending
2:31:16 on that. It’s terrible. Yeah, exactly. Whip my back. I’m not ending on that terrible shitty
2:31:19 end. There’s no way I want to end on a good rep.
2:31:23 And so I’d push and push and push. And more often than not, it would just continue to deteriorate.
2:31:29 Yeah. And then I would end up with some type of inflamed shoulder, inflamed X, Y, or Z that now
2:31:30 keeps me out of training for three or four days.
2:31:34 Or potentially hit you real hard five days later as you started.
2:31:37 Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So not worth it.
2:31:37 Yeah.
2:31:43 But that takes a lot. And to beat a dead horse, it comes back to also the journal, the notes,
2:31:45 the training logs.
2:31:49 But something that was interesting that you kind of discovered watching people on the practice range
2:31:55 the day after you competed or whenever that was, and you learned some things. You were watching a
2:31:59 couple of different shooters out there. There was a, I think the number one ranked barebow shooter that
2:32:05 won the ranking round that year and set the new Lancaster record for the ranking round. You were watching him
2:32:09 shoot. You first pointed him out to me and said, Hey, keep an eye on him. See if there’s anything
2:32:15 that he’s doing that maybe I should start to work on as, you know, just maybe there’s something I’m
2:32:20 missing. And, you know, I watched him for two arrows and I think I just walked right over to him. I said,
2:32:26 Hey, how’s it going? What’s your name? How long you been shooting? Oh, I was successful recurve
2:32:33 archer. Cause his form looked recurve. Like there’s a very distinct look to that. And he shot as a junior
2:32:39 competitively nationally, I believe for Canada, if I remember correctly. And then he shot all through
2:32:46 college shooting recurve competitively. And then he started shooting compound for a while and kind of
2:32:50 set down the bow, came back to it like four or five years later and started shooting barebow.
2:32:56 And so he already had a decade plus of archery experience doing essentially the same thing,
2:33:02 the same kind of form. And then you pointed out some 13, 14 year old Korean kids or something like
2:33:08 that. Korean American kids that were just pounding. Like they’re, they’re just stacking the arrows in at
2:33:13 the center. Yeah. I mean, and when you say stacking, it’s shooting six arrow ends in the size of the okay
2:33:17 symbol that you can make with your fingers basically. Like, and that’s impressive, especially at that age.
2:33:23 And so same kind of thing, you know, you’re like, I pointed them out. Look at these guys,
2:33:29 you know, I bet you they’re shooting X amount of arrows a day for, you know, 300 plus arrow. I’m just
2:33:34 guessing they shoot a lot. I can tell. So I went over to their coach who didn’t really want to respond
2:33:39 to me. So then I went to the kids directly. I was just like, how much you shoot, how long you’ve been
2:33:43 shooting. Which is possible because we have to go pull our arrows at the same time. Yes. Right. So you can
2:33:47 have a conversation. Yeah. And even if not, it’s the practice range. And again, we talked about the
2:33:51 community. They’re very welcoming. People are willing to discuss and communicate because it’s
2:33:56 just, everybody is in the same game. They’re all struggling quote unquote with the same thing that
2:34:00 you’re struggling with. And so they’re just in a different stage. And so you can learn from their
2:34:04 experience if you ask them the right questions and hopefully they’re willing to share. Yeah. The kids
2:34:08 are super friendly, super friendly. And so you’re, Hey, how long you’ve been shooting? Five years.
2:34:13 How many days a week do you shoot? Six days a week. How many arrows a day do you shoot? Two to three
2:34:16 hundred arrows every single day. That’s why they’re good, Tim.
2:34:24 Well now, okay. Now I’m going to get back on the, on the witness stand, defend myself. Not defend
2:34:28 myself. Not that you weren’t good. It’s just, there’s a stage, right? Yeah. I’m good. I mean,
2:34:33 they’re doing a lot of volume. Yeah. But that was despite having technique that was not great.
2:34:37 Sure. I also was like. Now to my untrained eye, I’m like, I can’t tell. Yeah. But I said this,
2:34:41 this, and that. They should do these things. You know, they, despite these issues, they’re still
2:34:46 able to do well because they’ve put in sustained reps for a very long period of time. So they’re able
2:34:52 to just default to what they do. Yeah. And you had six months. Yeah. They had five years. Yeah.
2:34:56 There’s a huge difference. It’s a different thing. Yeah. And it’s just, you get looking,
2:35:03 you look experienced from experience. You don’t just get it. You’ve got to make that groove,
2:35:07 as you said, in the brain and really make that neuromotor connection strong enough to where it
2:35:12 just fluidly happens. That’s why an expert is an expert. They’ve done the same thing thousands
2:35:19 and thousands and thousands of times. I can’t tell you how many, I’m well over a million shots the same
2:35:27 way, same technique, same thought process, same thought at full draw. So it’s yeah. An immense amount
2:35:32 of effort and work over time. Sustained effort is what really makes you good. Yeah.
2:35:37 Yeah. But that’s true for everything. Yeah. Well, it’s been a hell of a journey. It’s not
2:35:45 over. It’s not over. But we might bounce around, might ask some more questions. But do you want to
2:35:50 talk about the backyard championship? Yeah. So what the hell is the backyard championship?
2:35:56 So everybody loves to be a backyard world champion per se, because everybody, like I said, practice
2:36:01 scores don’t matter, right? Everybody can shoot well in their backyard. Everybody’s happy to tell you
2:36:05 how they’ve shot so well in their backyard and post their pictures of their targets all over social
2:36:11 media or potentially not just their backyard, but the range they shoot at or their club. And that’s
2:36:15 great. Like I’m, I’m all for it. I love that people are proud and passionate about what they’re doing.
2:36:21 And so we’re, we’re forming this thing that we’re calling the backyard championships, which is
2:36:26 essentially a digital tournament. We’re going to have two events this year, an indoor event and an
2:36:32 outdoor event. And essentially you will with a honor code and a buddy system, hopefully submit your scores
2:36:38 after you sign up for the actual event. And after you submit your scores, we’ll have a digital leaderboard
2:36:43 that people can essentially rank themselves amongst other people throughout the world. And it’ll be bracketed male,
2:36:49 female, adult kid, different disciplines, compound recurve, bare bow, you name it, just stick bow,
2:36:56 horse bow. I don’t, whatever it may be. As we identify important disciplines, we will make sure to have
2:37:01 that available so you can compete against other people shooting a similar bow. So this kind of ties
2:37:07 into encouraging others to pick up a bow and shoot archery. And as Joel Turner told me, it’s archery,
2:37:15 try it. Meaning it doesn’t matter what style of bow you shoot. You can shoot horse bow with your thumb.
2:37:20 You could shoot a trad bow. You can shoot a compound with a scope and a level and a release aid and huge
2:37:25 stabilizers. It’s archery and it’s really, really fun. And this is hopefully going to make it more
2:37:31 accessible to more people to show up at their local range, rent a bow, go shoot some arrows, get a score,
2:37:36 get it posted on the internet and just see how it goes. Cause it’s really fun to build a community.
2:37:41 And then within that, we’re going to have a, a discord server that is exclusive for people who
2:37:45 are competing at the event. So we’ll be able to have people discussing back and forth, maybe bragging
2:37:51 rights, things like that. And ultimately it’s nothing really being awarded other than bragging rights of
2:37:52 being a backyard champion.
2:37:58 All right. So I’m excited about this. I want to recommend everybody archery. Try it. I’ll echo
2:38:05 Joel, who by the way, is an amazing, we don’t have time for this, but an amazing thumb shooter. He’s got
2:38:11 a gnarled Franken thumb because he does it so often, but you can check that out. In fact, the oldest way
2:38:17 of shooting probably I would say is a thumb release. So you can check out Joel and his monster thumb and
2:38:23 his, and his system as well shot IQ, but coming back to this, the backyard championship, a few
2:38:27 things I want to say. Number one, this is an opportunity to have an end goal, right? It doesn’t
2:38:34 have to be a Lancaster as it was in my case, which also it’s not where I started out, right? I just
2:38:43 wanted the meditative practice. And quite frankly, this sort of blast from the past of using a tool
2:38:48 granted with some modern materials that humans have used for thousands of years upon thousands
2:38:56 upon thousands. And I think it is really therapeutic for a lot of people who try it and it’s just fun.
2:39:05 It’s really fun. So now you have the chance to have some type of goal related to giving archery a
2:39:10 shot. And if, if you don’t have your backyard championship set up and you don’t have your own
2:39:16 gear, that’s no problem whatsoever. I didn’t buy my own gear for a long time and you can go to a local
2:39:23 range and the folks are almost always incredibly welcoming, ready to help. Try a bunch of different
2:39:29 stuff. Yeah. Try a compound. Yeah. Try a recurve. Yeah. Try a horsebow. Yeah. Try them all out. And
2:39:34 it will give you a regular, at the very least, I mean, this is going to sound like an oversell,
2:39:37 but it will give you a regular meditation practice. Maybe you have trouble sitting on a cushion,
2:39:43 closing your eyes and doing it that way. A lot of people do try this. It for me was such an unlock
2:39:53 for tabling my monkey mind for an hour or two. It’s really remarkable. So I encourage people to try it
2:39:59 out. And this, uh, the backyard championship allows you to shoot multiple different disciplines and
2:40:04 submit multiple different scores. So if you have a compound or recurve, a bear bow, a long bow, a horse
2:40:09 bow, whatever you got, you can submit a score for each discipline for indoor and outdoor.
2:40:15 And once you submit your score, we have these really awesome quiver pins that we’ll send to you
2:40:19 as well. So you can show that you actually participated in the, the backyard championship.
2:40:21 So. All right. Where should people go?
2:40:26 Just head to my website, jakekaminski.com. Everything will be available there. As far as,
2:40:29 uh, the info, the leaderboard, all that info will just be all right there.
2:40:34 All right. Perfect. All right. Everybody check it out. The very least go to range, pick up a bow.
2:40:35 Yeah. Have a good time.
2:40:40 Take some intro classes. They do fun stuff. Some places they’ll blow up balloons or throw on the
2:40:45 black lights. There’s a lot of fun to be had. Yeah. Uh, also if you have kids, this is an awesome
2:40:46 activity to do with your kids.
2:40:52 Absolutely. I mean, and, uh, your YouTube channel, we recorded a video that’ll be coming out soon or
2:40:57 will be already. Yeah. And that, and that will show gear one-on-one from Jake and then also
2:41:03 technique one-on-one. Yeah. So if you’re really not sure and there’s nobody nearby or they’re not sure
2:41:08 how to help you, you’ll at least have a basic understanding of the equipment to be safe and to
2:41:14 also, uh, have a lot of fun too. So it’ll be great. So check that out. jakekaminski.com folks,
2:41:17 YouTube channel. I guess people can find it through the website. Is that the best way to do it?
2:41:22 On the, on the website, you can just search Jake Kaminski as well. It’ll pop up on YouTube direct.
2:41:28 It’ll pop up on any internet search as well. Very prevalent as far as the search engine results.
2:41:33 Easy to find. Jake Kaminski, K-A-M-I-N-S-K-I. Correct.
2:41:39 Kaminski.com. Once again, thanks so much to you and Heather. Yeah. It’s been a hell of a
2:41:45 quite a journey. Awesome adventure and trip and has reinvigorated me on in so many different ways.
2:41:54 And also I will say it’s, it’s given me so much energy in a sense. It’s been such a recharging
2:42:00 activity that it’s, it’s given me a lot that I can then apply to other places. Yeah. Yeah. I cannot
2:42:08 tell you, like I’ve had some, you know, challenging family issues, meaning medical issues over the last,
2:42:15 let’s call it six months in particular year. And having this as a way again, to just take a break
2:42:19 from that for a period of time to have a constant, right? I don’t need to rely on an entire team of
2:42:27 people to gather for a rec soccer game. It’s like, no, I can just book time off in these lanes, meaning
2:42:31 where you would stand and practice at a range. I mean, sometimes it’s like 10 bucks an hour. I mean,
2:42:34 it’s like, it’s not, it’s not going to break the bank. Yeah.
2:42:41 And rentals are generally very, very affordable and I can just take a break. I can go in two hours,
2:42:48 just quiet my mind. And it’s been such an incredible tool. So I want to thank both of you guys again.
2:42:53 Yeah. Anything else you’d like to add? Any closing comments before we wind to a close?
2:42:59 Yeah. Archery is difficult. It’s single-sided, rotational and static. So it’s not exactly good
2:43:04 for you. I mean, it’s great because it clears your mind. It’s activity. You got something to focus on,
2:43:08 but it can be a bit much for the body. So taking care of yourself, super important.
2:43:15 And part of that, I’ll give it another plug, jakecomincy.com. Watch Jake’s videos on technique
2:43:19 because if you are doing the same thing over and over and over again, you know, just imagine you
2:43:24 had a pebble in your shoe and you refuse to take it out and you take 10 steps. Okay. You’re fine.
2:43:29 Maybe you walk to Starbucks and back. You’re fine. You walk a thousand miles with that. You’re going to
2:43:35 have a big problem with your foot. Absolutely. And that is true with really any repetitive motion.
2:43:38 There are a lot of sports with repetitive motions. Yeah. Also applies to archery.
2:43:47 Yeah. And the problems I think are very easy to avoid. Yeah. With a few basic pointers that you
2:43:53 follow religiously. Yeah. And I’ve got an academy of sorts coming out. It’s like a Jake Kaminsky
2:43:59 academy that’ll teach you the technique. It is currently available as far as like form advice
2:44:05 that I give on my YouTube channel. But this academy is an ultra premium, high production quality that
2:44:09 once you buy into the system, you have lifetime access. So as you develop as an archery, you can
2:44:13 come back and check it out as often as you’d like. So that’s something that is in the works and
2:44:19 we’re, we’re getting very close to launching that that’ll also be available on jakekaminski.com as well.
2:44:24 And, uh, you know, as Joel Turner said, either way, it’s archery. You should try it.
2:44:32 Oh, man. Well, thanks again, Jake. So nice to see you and train with you. Heather. A lot of fun.
2:44:39 Thank you again. And folks listening, show notes. We’re going to have links to everything
2:44:45 as per usual, tim.blog slash podcast. I can pretty much guarantee you there will not be another Kaminsky
2:44:51 on the podcast as of yet. So you can check that out or just search Jake. I don’t think there are
2:44:58 many Jakes in the podcast library. And until next time, be just a bit kinder than is necessary
2:45:04 to others. Also to yourself. If you’re on the line and shoot a terrible shot, don’t go full monkey
2:45:12 tilt and punch yourself in the groin. Not worth it. Be kind. And I appreciate the other hidden chuckle
2:45:20 from behind the pillar. And until next time, thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one
2:45:26 more thing before you take off. And that is five bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email
2:45:31 for me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend between one and a half and
2:45:36 two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five bullet Friday,
2:45:43 easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the
2:45:48 coolest things I’ve found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It’s kind of like
2:45:54 my diary of cool things. It often includes articles. I’m reading books. I’m reading albums, perhaps
2:46:00 gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot
2:46:07 of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I
2:46:13 share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before
2:46:18 you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you’d like to try it out, just go to
2:46:24 tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you’ll
2:46:27 get the very next one. Thanks for listening.
2:46:33 As many of you know, for the last few years, I’ve been sleeping on a midnight luxe mattress from today’s
2:46:38 sponsor, Helix Sleep. I also have one in the guest bedroom downstairs and feedback from friends has
2:46:44 always been fantastic. Kind of over the top, to be honest. I mean, they frequently say it’s the best night of
2:46:48 sleep they’ve had in ages. What kind of mattresses and what do you do? What’s the magic juju? It’s something
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2:48:18 Not to be a salty old dog, but then again, that’s what I am. But in the early 2000s, back in the day,
2:48:24 when I was running my own e-commerce business, the tools were atrocious. They tried hard, but man,
2:48:31 to cobble all sorts of stuff together. Huge pain in the ass. I could only dream of a platform like
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0:00:04 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of
0:00:10 The Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today teaches people how to save themselves and their relationships
0:00:15 when they are on the brink. He is known as a turnaround expert. And what he teaches,
0:00:20 tactics and strategies are incredibly practical. I’ve used them in my own life. His fans include
0:00:26 Dr. Peter Atiyah, Kevin Rose, and many others. And he breaks all the rules of therapy, which is
0:00:31 part of what makes him very, very interesting to me because the results are undeniable. Terry Reel
0:00:36 is a nationally recognized family therapist, author, and teacher. He’s known for his groundbreaking work
0:00:42 on men and male psychology, as well as his work on gender and couples. His book, I Don’t Want to
0:00:47 Talk About It, Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, the first mainstream book ever written
0:00:52 on the topic of male depression, is a national bestseller. That really put him on the map in a
0:00:57 big way. His new book, Us, Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship,
0:01:02 is a New York Times bestseller. And I’ve also featured snippets of one of his audiobooks,
0:01:07 Fierce Intimacy, on this podcast before as a guest episode because what he teaches can be applied
0:01:13 immediately in all of your relationships, I would go so far to say. Terry’s Relational Life Institute
0:01:19 offers training for therapists and workshops for couples and individuals. And I will tell you in advance,
0:01:25 chances are you are going to disagree with some of what he says in this episode. So don’t throw the
0:01:30 baby out with the bathwater. If something gets your hackles up, just breathe and continue listening
0:01:37 and you will find something of value that you can apply in your life today or this week, sometime soon,
0:01:44 I promise you. You can find all things Terry at TerryReal.com. That’s T-E-R-R-Y-R-E-A-L.com.
0:01:50 We’re going to get right to a very wide-ranging and tactical conversation right after a few words
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0:01:59 Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for years. All that means to me is that
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0:02:16 stuff and everyone else’s agenda for my time. For me, let’s just say I’m a writer and entrepreneur,
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0:02:29 that are constantly churning, I end up feeling stressed out. And that is why today’s sponsor
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0:02:39 So here we go. I need to find people who are great at managing. And that is where Cresset
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0:02:57 founders, and entrepreneurs. They handle the complex financial planning, uncertain tax strategies,
0:03:04 timely exit planning, bill pay, wires, all the dozens of other parts of wealth management,
0:03:09 just financial management that would otherwise pull me away from doing what I love most, making
0:03:14 things, mastering skills, spending time with the people I care about. And over many years,
0:03:18 I was getting pulled away from that stuff at least a few days a week, and I’ve completely
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0:03:43 your financial plans and grow your wealth. That’s CressetCapital.com slash Tim. And disclosure,
0:03:47 I am a client of Cresset. There are no material conflicts other than this paid testimonial. And
0:03:52 of course, all investing involves risk, including loss of principle. So do your due diligence.
0:03:58 My first book, The 4-Hour Workweek, which made everything else possible, is built around the
0:04:05 acronym and framework DEAL, D-E-A-L, Define, Eliminate, Automate, and Liberate. Now, of course,
0:04:10 after you define all the things you want, your metrics, 80-20, blah, blah, blah, then you want
0:04:15 to get rid of as much as possible, eliminate. But sometimes there are things that are a huge
0:04:19 hassle, like expense management for a lot of companies, which you can’t get rid of. They are
0:04:25 essential to your business. But today, thank God, you can automate it. And there is no better
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0:05:33 Optimal, minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake.
0:05:35 Can I ask you a personal question?
0:05:37 Now would have seen an appropriate time.
0:05:38 What if I did the opposite?
0:05:42 I’m a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
0:05:54 Terry, so nice to see you. Thanks for making the time for the show.
0:05:57 Oh, it’s wonderful to be here, Tim. I’m a big fan.
0:06:04 And I am a big fan. And it all started with two people. I would say Peter Atiyah first on the topic
0:06:13 of male depression and then Kevin Rose on couples therapy specifically. So we’ve had, I suppose,
0:06:21 indirectly and directly a few years, or I’ve had a few years of Terry Reel. And I thought that I would
0:06:29 share more of Terry live and in person with my audience for a number of reasons. And as we
0:06:34 discussed before recording, I thought we would start with some stories. Story time with Terry. And I will
0:06:37 cue it with bread.
0:06:40 Pumpernickel.
0:06:46 Pumpernickel. Exactly. As all good stories begin. Pumpernickel. So could you fill in the blanks with
0:06:47 that particular story, please?
0:06:55 So as you know, Tim, my specialty, a couple on the brink that no one else has been able to help.
0:06:59 That’s what I’ve been doing for 20 years. And that’s what I teach. So here’s a couple on the
0:07:07 brink. The issue was that he was a chronic liar. I teach my therapist, you pay attention to what people
0:07:11 report, you pay attention to what they do in front of you, and you pay attention to how you feel.
0:07:17 And he’s one of these guys, I walk in and I go, the sky’s blue. And he goes, well, not really blue.
0:07:25 It’s really, the guy is a champion evader. So I get that. He’s an evader. Then I ask a relational
0:07:31 question. A standard therapist would think, oh, where’d you get that? No. There’s somebody else on
0:07:38 the other side of that habit. He learned it. So I say to him, who controlled you growing up?
0:07:46 He’s an evader. Who is he evading? Sure enough, dad, military man, how he sat, how he ate,
0:07:52 his friends. I said, well, what did that little boy do with that controlling father? And Timmy smiles.
0:07:59 And that’s the smile of resistance. I like that smile. Very mischievous smile. And he says to me,
0:08:05 ready? I lied. Dad said, don’t play with Henry. I played with Henry and told him I was playing with Tom.
0:08:15 Boy, I always teach my students, be respectful of the exquisite intelligence of that adaptive little
0:08:22 boy or girl that you were. You did just what you needed to do to get by. But guess what? You’re not
0:08:30 that little boy. Your wife is not your father. Maybe you’re on death’s door here, but maybe it’s time to
0:08:36 change this up. That’s it. One session. Of course, I don’t tell you the one sessions that don’t work.
0:08:40 I have to tell you the ones that work. Anyway, one session. They come back two weeks. That’s
0:08:46 absolutely true. Hand in hand. We’re done. And they were. They were done. Okay, there’s a story here.
0:08:52 Tell me this story. Guy says to me, over the weekend, his wife sent him to the grocery store to get,
0:08:59 say, 12 thanks. And true to form, he comes back with 11. The wife says, where’s the pumpernickel?
0:09:08 I want folks to feel this. He says, every muscle and nerve in his body was screaming to say they were
0:09:15 out of it. This is a moment my wife, wonderful family therapist, Belinda Berman, calls relational
0:09:23 heroism. Every muscle was screaming to do the same old, same old. And I took a breath. I thought of you.
0:09:30 He was borrowing my prefrontal cortex. I thought of you, Terry. I looked at my wife and I said,
0:09:38 I forgot the goddamn pumpernickel. And she looked at me, true story, and she burst into tears. And she
0:09:46 said, I’ve been waiting for this moment for 25 years. That’s the story. So in relational life therapy,
0:09:54 the work I’ve created, we talk about three parts of the human psyche. The wise adult, the part I’m
0:10:00 talking to right now, prefrontal cortex, the most evolved part of the brain, that’s the part that
0:10:05 evolved last in the human species. That’s the part that evolves last. Hey, you parents out there with
0:10:14 ADHD kids, 26 years old, chill. You got 26 years before they start to calm down. Anyway, prefrontal cortex,
0:10:22 stop and think and choose. But what makes life interesting and dicey is there are two, we call
0:10:29 them subcortical parts of the brain, automatic, you know, knee jerk response. The mature, wise adult,
0:10:38 all the way amygdala in the back is the completely flooded, wounded child part, first moments of life
0:10:44 to four or five, just flooded, just wants to crawl in someone’s lap and cry. Between these two is what
0:10:49 we call the adaptive child part. And Tim, that’s the part most of the people I see have lived most of their
0:10:57 lives in thinking that that’s an adult. And it’s not. It’s a kid’s version of an adult. And the
0:11:03 hallmark of the adaptive child part of us is that it’s automatic. Fight, flight, fawn. I got to get
0:11:08 out of here or the world’s gone. I got to stand up for myself. What is fawn? Could you explain that
0:11:12 co-dependence? Oh my God, Tim’s feeling bad. I got to make him feel good because if he doesn’t feel
0:11:19 good, I don’t feel good. Big for a lot of women, but not only women. And it’s not an adult, let me see
0:11:24 what I can do to make this relationship work. It’s an anxious, compulsive, oh my God, I got to fix this
0:11:34 guy. Okay. What we teach is shifting out of that, we call it relational mindfulness. This is the core
0:11:41 skill from which all other skills depend. The adaptive child part of us, you know, you played
0:11:47 the losing strategies from fierce intimacy in a podcast. It doesn’t want to use skills. It doesn’t
0:11:54 want to be intimate. Intimacy is scary. It wants self-protection. So, I’m going to control you. I’m
0:12:01 going to scream at you. I’m going to withdraw from you. I will never get what I want in the relationship
0:12:07 when my adaptive child is taken over. And almost all of the people I see, that’s what happens.
0:12:12 You know, skills are great, but when you’re flooded, they go right out the window. So, the first skill,
0:12:17 I call it remembering love. Remember the person you’re speaking to as someone you care about.
0:12:23 And you live with them, dummy. It’s in your interest. So, get centered in that, you know,
0:12:28 somebody wrote, wait, why am I talking? And be honest with you. Are you talking to nail your
0:12:33 partner into the ground or prove you’re right? Then take a break. I’m a big fan of break. Wait until
0:12:39 you remember you’re talking to someone you care about, and the reason why you’re opening up your
0:12:47 mouth is to make things better. Now, what makes life even more dicey is that that adaptation,
0:12:56 like the guy in the story lying, was born in a relationship. And what happens is when people
0:13:02 shift out of, I call, I speak about miserable, comfortable, happy, uncomfortable. And when you
0:13:11 move out of that into new territory, vulnerability, risk-taking, courage, standing up for yourself for
0:13:19 some, coming down and yielding for others, when you move into intimacy, you lose that old relationship.
0:13:30 And there’s a lot of, not always, but there’s a lot of unconscious guilt and loyalty. So, part of the
0:13:35 reason why we don’t change is we’re loyal to the relationships that we learn how to be screwed up in.
0:13:44 And it feels odd. I say we’re immigrants. We leave the old country and the old people behind. So,
0:13:50 a story. Here’s a story. True story. The guy comes to me. He says, you’re my ninth therapist.
0:13:55 There’s a challenge. Gauntlets down, right? Another notch in the belt.
0:14:00 I mean, my ninth therapist. Eight therapists have tried to help me. And he was screwed up. The guy
0:14:07 was an award-winning artist, a celebrated artist. You know, he’s got a bad back. He doesn’t go to the
0:14:14 doctor. He’s got rotten teeth. He smokes too much. He’s just a mess. Going to die early at this rate.
0:14:23 What’s his story? Here’s his story. It was raised by a single mom. She died of alcoholism. Didn’t know
0:14:30 his dad. Her story was, when she was a little girl, her father beat everybody up in the whole house. Mother
0:14:37 and all four sisters in her. And the little nine-year-old girl, this feisty chick, walks over
0:14:42 to her father and says, you lay a hand on my mother or my sisters and I’m going to call the police and
0:14:48 have you sent to jail. True story. Father looks at this little nine-year-old and says, okay,
0:14:55 you win. I’m not going to lay a hand on your mother or sisters ever again. I’m just going to beat you.
0:15:00 And he beat her every day of her life until she finally escaped at 60.
0:15:00 Jesus.
0:15:02 Then she became an alcoholic.
0:15:03 Wow.
0:15:04 Catholic family.
0:15:12 So here’s what I say. I say, well, I know why a therapist have failed. And he cued me. He said,
0:15:16 I said, what happens with your therapist? He said, well, sooner or later, they all care more about me
0:15:23 than I do. And then I ditch them. Okay, got it. I said, okay, I know why that happened.
0:15:34 I say, your mother, who he adored, your mother was a sainted martyr. What she did to save her family
0:15:41 as a nine-year-old girl was crawl up on that cross and get crucified. And guess what? You’re up on that
0:15:49 cross with her. And if you take care of yourself and live a life and get happy and successful and
0:15:54 intimate, you will leave her on the cross. She’s dead, by the way, but it doesn’t matter.
0:16:01 You’ll leave her. And you ain’t going to do that. So you know what? I’m not going to try and make you
0:16:06 better. I’m going to celebrate your sacrifice. And this is a true story, Tim. He looked at me and he
0:16:13 goes, my back is killing me. Do you know a good doctor in New York? And there we were.
0:16:14 So what do you do with that?
0:16:18 I got him a good doctor in New York. I mean, once there’s progress,
0:16:20 move it.
0:16:23 I got it. So at that point, he was ready to actually make change.
0:16:33 Yeah. I say, look, this is what you’re doing. I admire it. I always side with the adaptation.
0:16:40 I admire it. By the way, you’re going to die. Your mother’s already dead. She doesn’t care anymore.
0:16:47 But what a loyal guy you are. Congratulations. You really want to live like this? And he says, no.
0:16:51 Everybody else argued with him. You got to live. You got to live. No, I don’t. No, I don’t.
0:16:57 Why don’t you crawl up on that cross and die with your mother? You go, I don’t think so.
0:17:07 One of the differentiating characteristics that I appreciate about you, and I can only speak to my
0:17:12 experience with you, but I’m sure it applies to therapists you’ve trained, is taking a position.
0:17:21 You’re not playing the neutral mirror with all of your clients, which gets old very quickly, for me at
0:17:25 least, when I’ve worked with other therapists. When I ask them what they think, and they’re like, well,
0:17:33 what do you think? And it just becomes this game of echo. Why do you think it is so uncommon to take
0:17:36 positions, and how can it be effective?
0:17:43 Oh, my God. We’re taught not to, as therapists. We’re actively taught not to. God forbid you should,
0:17:49 you know, thou shalt not take sides. If you take a side, particularly if you side with a woman against
0:17:55 a man, then you have to go to your supervisor and talk about your mother for a while, and then you can
0:18:02 go back into the therapy. No, no, no, no, no. The idea is that all problems are 50-50, and common sense
0:18:11 knows that’s just bullshit. Literally, I treated a couple, the guy was an untreated, bipolar, manic
0:18:18 depressive, alcoholic wager. What was the woman’s quote-unquote contribution? She was there. That
0:18:23 was her contribution. And this was the feminist critique of family therapy. You don’t say to an
0:18:30 abused spouse, what’s your 50% of this? I mean, that’s grotesque. So, in RLT, we call it like we see it.
0:18:38 Tim, you’re a nut. And Mrs. Tim, you’re an even bigger nut, and here’s why. And here’s what I think
0:18:45 you need to do about it. So, some problems are 40-60. Some problems are 99-1. We call it like we see it.
0:18:53 So, I want to bring up some other, perhaps, concepts or ways of looking at common problems that I think
0:18:59 could help people. Could you discuss objectivity battles? Maybe paint a picture of what that looks
0:19:04 like? And this is something I found personally very helpful, by the way, not just in intimate
0:19:08 relationships, but in all relationships. So, could you speak to this, please?
0:19:14 Yeah. I’m glad you said that, because relationships are relationships. We’re doing a corporate piece.
0:19:21 We’re doing a big thing for the general public. And the same skills in work, with your kids, with your dog.
0:19:26 Although, most people treat their dogs better than they treat their spouses. But anyway.
0:19:36 okay. What were we talking about? We’re talking about objectivity battles. So, what does it look like
0:19:44 to do that the wrong way? Actually, let me go big picture for 30 seconds. The essence of my work,
0:19:51 the new book, Us, is about correcting what Gregory Bates and the father of family therapy, husband of
0:19:59 Margaret Mead, called humankind’s epistemological error, philosophical error. And here it is. We stand apart
0:20:06 from nature, and we control it. We stand apart from nature, that’s individualism. We control it, that’s
0:20:13 patriarchy. And by the way, control can be one up, that’s male, do what I say, or regulating up,
0:20:20 one down, that’s traditionally the female, enabling, don’t get daddy off. Both forms of control, all
0:20:27 bullshit. Nobody controls anything. Instead, we offer a map, and then tools to live it. But here’s the new map.
0:20:36 You’re not outside of nature, idiot. You’re inside nature, and you depend upon it. Our relationships
0:20:43 are our biospheres. We breathe them. You’re an ecosystem. You can pollute your biosphere with a
0:20:49 temper tantrum over here, but your partner will retaliate with cold distance over here. There’s no
0:20:55 escape. You’re linked. And the idea that you’re not linked is diluted. So, once you wake up
0:21:04 to the fact that I’m in it, I’m not above it, then all the rules change. Who’s right, who’s wrong,
0:21:12 who cares? So, objectivity battle. Here’s the bitter pill. Objectivity has no place in personal
0:21:20 relations. I’m sorry. The relational answer, or ecological answer, there are two ways of saying the
0:21:24 same thing. The relational answer to who’s right and who’s wrong is who gives a shit.
0:21:29 What matters is, how are you and I going to work this thing in a way that’s going to work for us?
0:21:35 And proving who’s right and who’s wrong is not the way to do that. Look, I’ve been married 40 years.
0:21:43 When my wife and I have a disagreement over accuracy, who remembered it correctly, whose feelings are more
0:21:49 valid, you know, she’s a very difficult person, Belinda. And she has this nasty way of thinking
0:21:55 she’s right and I’m wrong. I don’t know why she does that. It doesn’t work. So, let me give you an
0:22:03 example of the new world. This is a true story. Okay? Totally heteronormative. Her to him, you’re a
0:22:08 reckless driver. Him to her, you’re overly nervous. How many of us have been through this one?
0:22:15 And then everybody starts marshalling their evidence and arguing their case. No, you’re nervous. You’re
0:22:19 nervous about this. You’re nervous. No, no, you’re reckless. You tailgate. Okay, that’s an objectivity.
0:22:28 Who’s right? Who’s wrong? After one session with me, true story. Her to him, honey, start with that.
0:22:36 Change the energy. Honey, I know you love me. Right or wrong? Maybe I’m overly nervous or whatever. See,
0:22:43 she just takes the whole battle off the table by talking subjectively. Maybe I’m overly nervous.
0:22:49 Nevertheless, when you tailgate and you go switch lanes and you speed up, I get crazy. I get scared.
0:22:55 Now, when you’re driving on your own, I worry, but it’s your life. When I’m next to you,
0:23:02 you don’t really want me sitting here being terrified the whole time we’re driving. As a favor to me,
0:23:11 could you please slow down and drive more conservatively? And him to her, be, be, be. Okay. And he does.
0:23:19 What might have been a fight that lasted 40 years is done in 15 minutes because it moves out of
0:23:25 objective. Who’s the authority? Who’s right? Who’s wrong? What’s fair? What’s unfair? And it becomes
0:23:36 relational. We’re a team. You love me as a favor to me. Could you? Sure. New world. New world and new tools.
0:23:42 And just to underscore that, I remember hearing you give an example and suppose the overarching point
0:23:48 that I was going to underscore is there isn’t a threshold past which your objective data wins
0:23:55 typically, right? So, so if you think, if you think your wife is yelling at a server at a restaurant,
0:24:00 it doesn’t matter if you have an audiologist sitting right next to you with various types of
0:24:02 measurement equipment, it’s still not going to work.
0:24:05 It’s not going to work. It’s not going to work. Yeah.
0:24:10 I call this applying a scientific method to your relationship, but good luck.
0:24:17 Yeah. So I’m probably going to do a poor job of prompting this, but I found it so fascinating when
0:24:23 when I heard you present it once. And that was in effect, the same way that people sometimes
0:24:28 escalate problems where they say, dah, dah, dah, dah, then you always do this. And it’s reflective
0:24:32 of this character flaw, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you could lay it out much more eloquently
0:24:38 than I could is the same way that you can deescalate something. If you apologize for it,
0:24:42 if you’re out yourself. Yeah. Could you speak to that? Because I just thought that was such a
0:24:46 brilliant turnaround technique when I heard it, that it’s stuck with me ever since.
0:24:54 Yeah. This is a step in the critical process of repair. And either in this one or you invite me
0:25:00 back, I would love to lay out some skills. You know, we did the losing strategy. I want to do some
0:25:09 of the winning. And here’s a skill that’s part of repair. First of all, look, all of us, when someone
0:25:16 we care about confronts us with something difficult, we move into two orientations.
0:25:21 The first is objective reality. Well, that’s true. That’s not true. That’s accurate. That’s not. Well,
0:25:26 you got to understand that. And then we argue. In our heads, it’s not out of our mouths. We don’t
0:25:33 listen. We rebut. And then the second orientation we all go to is ourselves. I can’t believe I have to
0:25:39 put up with this crap. Belinda, I was just on the road telling thousands of people how to love each
0:25:47 other. And I come home and you, this is, okay. Let go of objective reality. Let go of you and take a
0:25:56 breath. And I want everybody to write this one down. Enter into compassionate curiosity about your
0:26:02 partner’s subjective experience. Let me say it again. Compassionate curiosity about your partner’s
0:26:09 subjective experience. They’re nuts. Okay. But find out what kind of nut they are. That feels bad,
0:26:16 honey. Help me understand. Who sounds like that? But that makes peace. And then when they tell you,
0:26:23 you did this, you did this, you did this, acknowledge it. Don’t deny it. Don’t minimize it. Don’t
0:26:29 rational. Yeah, but that’s not an apology. Yeah, but I did it. Land on it. And if you really want to
0:26:34 get slick, here’s the deal. Ready? This is the advanced course. You went right to the PhD, Tim.
0:26:44 Here’s what I want you to notice. Generally speaking, functional moves in a relationship are moves that
0:26:52 empower your partner to come through for you. Nobody gets this. Functional moves in a car make the car go.
0:26:58 Dysfunctional moves stop it. Functional moves in a relationship empower the other guy to give you
0:27:04 what you want. Dysfunctional moves render them helpless. So what we do, because we’re trying to
0:27:10 get heard, is we go, you did this, and last week you did that, and 10 years ago you did that, and you
0:27:18 always, and you never. The normal escalation is from this moment to trend to character. And I teach
0:27:24 people to stay particular and not do that. Because every move up that ladder renders the person you’re
0:27:29 speaking to are more helpless. And they’re either just going to get mad or leave. You did it, you
0:27:36 always, you never, you are a, you’re a slob. Okay. All right. So stay particular if you’re the disgruntled
0:27:45 one. But if you’ve been confronted, B is, yes, I did it. Here’s an A. You walk up the same ladder I’m
0:27:50 telling you not to do as the disgruntled one. I did it. It’s not the first time I’ve done it.
0:27:56 Tay, the kids and I were waiting for you. You knew dinner was at 7. You come waltzing in at 7.45. You
0:28:05 don’t call. You don’t text. It was really rude. You’re right. I did that. And I can be late. It’s
0:28:10 an issue. We know that. And when I do that, I’m being thoughtless. I get caught up in the moment,
0:28:18 and I stop thinking about the impact I’m having. And that’s really kind of selfish of me. I do have
0:28:26 some selfish tendencies. I’m working on it. Holy shit. Now that’s an apology. So if your partner
0:28:34 outs you, you did it before, you often do it, you never, you always, it’s terrible. But if you out you,
0:28:40 oh my God, your partner’s going, wow, there’s hope. This is great. It’s a funny thing.
0:28:46 Yeah. It makes me think of, I think it was Hurt Locker and the bomb defusing. It’s just like,
0:28:52 you know, it’s like, wow, nice job. Nice job with the defusing. And then of course,
0:28:56 ultimately you should be working on this issue that you say you’re going to work on or pay attention
0:29:04 to. Tell me if this is geotechnical bullshit. I’m sorry, but I have another story. One of my clients
0:29:10 told me this is true story. He said, on his wedding day, and I say this, no offense, but particularly
0:29:16 for men, on his wedding day, his father-in-law said, let’s go for a walk. Okay. He said, son,
0:29:22 I got two things for you to master. You master just these two things. Your marriage is going to be
0:29:28 great. He said, okay, pops, I’ll buy it. What you got? He goes, you’re really sorry, and you’re going to
0:29:42 work on it. Yeah. I imagine that that’ll give you a lot of payoff over a lot of miles. What is another
0:29:49 term that I’d never heard before being exposed to your work? Normal marital hatred. I got this from
0:29:55 Ed Tronick, infant observational researcher. Ed, along with Barry Braslington, was the first generation,
0:30:03 you know, since Freud, what we said about child development all came from listening to adults.
0:30:08 We didn’t watch any kids, and he was one of the first people to actually plunk a video camera in
0:30:12 front of mothers and infants, and then fathers and infants, and actually look at what happens.
0:30:19 And what he came up with, I borrowed, and it’s central to RLT, which is, the essential rhythm of all
0:30:27 relationships is harmony, disharmony, and repair. Closeness, disruption, and a return to closeness.
0:30:33 That’s where the skills come in, how to move from disruption to repair. Our culture doesn’t teach
0:30:39 it. Our culture doesn’t even acknowledge a good relationship is all harmony, just like a good
0:30:46 body is yours. A good body is like a 20-year-old’s body. A good sex life is like, you know, what you
0:30:53 had when you were two weeks into the relationship. No, all harmony is bullshit. Bullshit. One of the
0:30:58 things I like about you, Tim, is you tell the truth. You know what? You go to a cocktail party,
0:31:05 and you go, oh, there’s Harry and Shirley. They’re in their 80s. They still have sex. They love each
0:31:10 other. One of these days, I like to go to a cocktail party in here. There’s Harry and Shirley.
0:31:17 They actually split up for a year. He fell in love with another woman. He couldn’t take it because she
0:31:22 was such a drunk, but then she got into AA and got sober, and the two of them are really doing reasonably
0:31:30 well. Aren’t they cute? Just once I’d like to hear that. So we don’t deal with reality. You know,
0:31:39 the father of couples therapy back in the 50s said the day you turned to the person who was next to you,
0:31:47 it was assumed it was your marriage, and you’d say, this is a mistake. I’ve been had. This is not the
0:31:53 person I fell in love with. That said, Framo, is the first day of your real marriage. So here’s what
0:32:02 I want to say about disharmony. You ready? It hurts. It’s dark. You can really, really feel like,
0:32:09 what the hell did I get myself into? This is such a disappointment. And guess what? Your partner’s
0:32:16 probably feeling that about you, too. So I talk about normal marital hatred when you’re in that dark
0:32:24 face. You hate your partner. That’s okay. Don’t kill yourself or her. That’s okay. I’ll teach you
0:32:30 how to get through it, but it’s part of the deal for many of us. And here’s what I like to say.
0:32:35 I’ve been going around the world talking about normal marital hatred for, oh my God, what, 30 years.
0:32:40 This is true. Not one person has ever come backstage and said, Terry, what do you mean by that?
0:32:49 It’s okay, kids. Don’t sweat it. You can get through it. It’s normal. Relax.
0:32:56 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we’ll be right back to the show.
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0:34:24 What are some of the first steps or tools that you would recommend to someone listening
0:34:32 who agrees with what you’re saying, but has had no models for repair, has never learned how to
0:34:38 use any type of approach for repair? And this is something that your direct help and then also your
0:34:42 books have really helped me with because I did not grow up in a household with repair, right? It was
0:34:47 basically one person screams, then the other person goes to fix, which they don’t really want to do,
0:34:55 but it’s their attempt to basically quell the disaster and fury. And that’s it. Then everybody’s
0:35:00 kind of upset and it never gets addressed. That was the model growing up. What do you suggest to people
0:35:02 who want to start with repair?
0:35:08 You know, of course, I’m tempted to say, so are you a screamer or a fixer? But I won’t. I’ll leave
0:35:08 that alone.
0:35:11 I’m a fixer. I’m not a screamer.
0:35:18 Oh, okay. Lucky for your partner. But the problem is the resentment that builds up.
0:35:19 Yeah, exactly.
0:35:19 Yeah.
0:35:26 Yeah. Okay. So repair. First of all, here’s, I like to say I have a number of bitter pills to swallow,
0:35:32 but if you swallow them, things will be a lot better in your life. And here’s one of them.
0:35:41 Repair is a one-way street. Everybody gets that wrong. It’s not a dialogue. It’s not, well, these are your
0:35:48 issues with me. Well, these are my issues with you. No. You have your turn, but not then. Take turns.
0:35:55 So if you have a disgruntled partner, you are at their service. That’s the first thing to master.
0:36:01 You know, I like to say, Tim, you’re at the customer service window. Somebody comes to customer service
0:36:05 window and says, my microwave doesn’t work. They don’t want to hear you say, well, my toaster doesn’t
0:36:11 work. They don’t want your excuses. Fix the goddamn microwave. Tend to your partner and bring them back
0:36:17 into repair with you. Tend to them. Put yourself aside and tend to them. What does that look like?
0:36:28 Two things. First, do I get it? Listen. Don’t argue. Don’t rebut. Empty the well. I’m sorry you
0:36:33 feel bad. That’s beautiful. Compassion. I’m sorry you feel bad. I love you. I don’t want you to feel
0:36:39 bad. Help me understand. What feels bad? What’s it like for you? Okay. And then you reflect. This is what
0:36:48 I hear you say. Did I get it? Yeah. Good enough. Good. Two, is there something I could say or do
0:36:56 right now that would be helpful? What would you like? Who says that? And then if it’s anything
0:37:02 short of jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, give it to them. Be generous. Those are the basics. I could be
0:37:10 more specific. Let me ask you a follow-up which is related to this. When someone is attempting to do
0:37:18 this but they’re having trouble biting their tongue because you ask what’s upsetting someone or you ask
0:37:24 them to describe their feelings and they say, well, when you did this, this, and this, and you disagree
0:37:29 with their assessment of reality. We already talked about where objective reality doesn’t exist. But
0:37:36 nonetheless, it could trigger visceral response. What is your advice to people who struggle with
0:37:40 that? Where it’s like, that isn’t a reflection of reality. Come on. And they want to rebut, but
0:37:45 they’re not supposed to. How would you suggest they table it? What should they say to themselves? Or do
0:37:51 you have any other pieces of advice? Well, we both know you’re a nut. Let’s investigate exactly what
0:37:57 kind of nut you are. Let’s get curious. And actually, let’s get compassion. One of the things I say is
0:38:04 no one’s a nut to themselves. You know, the paranoid who’s crouched under the desk because the Russians
0:38:12 have put germs in the ventilating system knows that we’re all going to die. And if you knew that there
0:38:18 were germs, you’d be under there with them. No one doesn’t make sense to themselves. They don’t make sense
0:38:26 sense to you. So let go of you and see if you can enter into the world of the person. When you show up
0:38:32 to our interview with a t-shirt, these are the rules of speaking. I make up. We teach people to say what I
0:38:39 make up is. No objective reality. What I make up is, you have a very casual feeling about this interview.
0:38:44 Don’t you know that you’re talking to the great Terry Reel? I’ve had a little formality. And I feel
0:38:50 really insulted. All right, you’re sitting there going, fuck you. Give me a break. If we were partners,
0:38:57 you would take a breath and you would go, okay, help me understand. What is it about the t-shirt that
0:39:03 was so upsetting to you? And then, okay, so you think it was disrespectful. Did I get that right?
0:39:08 It’s like, I don’t, you’re a nut. I know that Russians didn’t put germs in the ventilating
0:39:13 system, but I want to understand you. Look, I’m sorry that hurt your feelings. I didn’t mean to be
0:39:21 overly informal. And then if you really want an A plus, this is really parking your ego at the door.
0:39:28 I can understand how you might feel like that. And really what it is, is I can understand
0:39:34 praying, thinking the nutty things you think, if you think that way, that you would feel like that.
0:39:39 So give it to them. Be generous. I can understand how you might feel like that. Is there something
0:39:41 I could say or do that would help you feel better?
0:39:48 Got it. All right. Very helpful. I wanted to shift gears just a little bit. And we can go
0:39:53 in a lot of different directions. We can also come back to repair because, as you said already,
0:40:01 I mean, this is practically universally neglected in terms of any type of education that people tend
0:40:08 to receive, but we’ll park that for a second. I wanted to know what types of deal breakers exist
0:40:16 when you work with clients. And that could include addictions, psychiatric conditions, et cetera. But I
0:40:21 wanted you to maybe run us through what that list looks like, because I might want to double click on a
0:40:27 few of them. So if you go to my website, and I’m supposed to put in a plug for social media,
0:40:30 you can follow me. May I say how?
0:40:30 Of course.
0:40:42 Let me get it right. You can follow me at all socials at capital R real, capital T Terry, capital R real.
0:40:51 So at real Terry real, or you can go to my website, Terry real.com. Anyway, so I have an article about
0:40:59 this. Should I stay or should I go? And the tool I use is what I call a relational reckoning. And it’s
0:41:06 a question you ask yourself. Here’s the question. Am I getting enough in this relationship to make
0:41:15 grieving what I’m not getting worth my while? Let me say that again. Am I getting enough in this
0:41:24 relationship to make the pain of what’s missing? Okay with me? And if the answer is yes, it is okay,
0:41:31 then stop whining and embrace what’s good. You know, work the change to get more, but embrace what’s good
0:41:37 and stop walking around like a big angry victim. If the answer is no, it’s not enough, then do something
0:41:44 about it. Lean in and fight. And if it doesn’t work, drag your partner to hopefully an RLT therapist,
0:41:50 they’re the ones I believe in, and get an ally and get some help. And if that doesn’t work, you’re done.
0:41:57 So, okay. So in answering the question, what’s a deal breaker? Let me be clear. Deal breakers come
0:42:04 only after you’ve dragged your partner to a couple’s therapist and one that actually helps. And you know,
0:42:10 you’ve heard me say, I don’t think most do, but get one that will side with you and be an ally and take
0:42:18 that person on. Okay. Deal breakers. Basically, do they want to work or not? If you want to work and they
0:42:27 don’t, you could be done. And that could be an addiction, could be sexual acting out, could be anger, could be
0:42:34 lying, could be withholding and passive aggression. But if you’re not getting what you want, and the truth of the
0:42:41 matter is, your partner isn’t going to do the work of giving you more of what you want, you’re done.
0:42:48 And there are a lot of variations on that. Obviously, if somebody’s got an active addiction and they don’t
0:42:55 want to work on it, I would not. And people do. People go to Al-Anon and manage, but I’d prefer you
0:43:03 break up. If somebody’s a rager or mistreating you, if they violate contracts, particularly monogamy,
0:43:11 if they’re chronic liars, and if they have an untreated psychiatric condition, anxiety, depression.
0:43:17 And then, this is interesting, and I would really not trust yourself. I would only trust a professional.
0:43:28 If there’s a massive difference in the maturity level of the two people, the evolution of the two people,
0:43:38 the immaturity of the unevolved one will start to feel too painful to the more mature one, and they
0:43:40 should leave and find a different partner.
0:43:46 So, when you… I guess a few questions related to everything you just said. The first is,
0:43:54 I have to imagine that in many instances, it’s one partner who not necessarily drags the other person,
0:43:59 but convinces them to do therapy. They’re not equally enthusiastic about perhaps being in front
0:44:07 of the therapist. So, I would imagine there’s a grace period of sorts to enlist the other person.
0:44:18 So, how do you do that if one person is more resistant or stoic, and the other person is
0:44:22 the one who’s more enthused, who sort of initiated that first session?
0:44:29 It’s sort of carrot and stick. I talk about leverage, negative and positive leverage.
0:44:35 Tim, your partner is saying to you this, this, and this. She’s pretty fed up. Are you fed up,
0:44:43 partner of Tim? Yeah, I’m fed up. How fed up are you exactly? Do you believe her? Why should he
0:44:49 believe you? And what I’m doing is I’m amplifying the negative consequences. They’re there, but you’re
0:44:55 not looking at them. So, my first move is to empower your partner to be firm and speak up to you,
0:45:01 and I use that as leverage to get your interest. So, this is the negative thing that I can help you
0:45:08 avoid. And here’s the positive thing I can deliver. Would you like a happier, warmer, sexier partner?
0:45:15 Okay. And if you have kids, this is a big one. Hey, Tim, what kind of father did you have?
0:45:24 What kind of father do you want to be? I got bad and good news. If you don’t do this work,
0:45:32 you’re going to do some version of what got done to you to them. You want to do that? Would you like
0:45:38 to be a better father than the one you grew up with? Okay, well, you got to let me help you. And a lot
0:45:44 of particularly men who won’t do, it’s hard work, this work. They won’t do it for themselves. They won’t
0:45:52 do it for their witty wives. They will do it to spare their children. So, I get buy-in. And it’s a
0:45:57 combination of, this is what’s going to happen to you if you don’t change. And this is what could
0:46:02 happen for you if you do. Here’s the consequence. Here’s the reward.
0:46:08 And when you’re talking about deal breakers, could you just clarify in what sense they are deal
0:46:13 breakers? Does it mean that you will not work with them as clients until they address one of those
0:46:19 deal breakers? For instance, they have addiction to alcohol or gambling or whatever it might be.
0:46:23 I found it interesting that you mentioned the anxiety and depression because one of the topics
0:46:31 I wanted to talk to you about is male depression. And I guess I’m curious if you work with some of
0:46:37 those in tandem or if people are kind of left to their own devices to figure it out.
0:46:44 never, never do that. I never confront somebody and then let them swing in the wind. I’m always right
0:46:50 next to you telling you, okay, this is what you’re doing that ain’t working. Let me take your hand and
0:46:55 teach you what does work. And that’s different than a lot of other therapies. We get, roll up our sleeves
0:47:03 and get granular. Tim, this isn’t you. I’m just, Tim, do you notice that your face is kind of frozen when
0:47:08 you talk and you’re speaking a monotone and your wife is out of her mind right now because nobody’s
0:47:13 ever said this to you, but she, she’s bored as hell next to you. Look, this is what I want you to do as
0:47:18 we learn to, we learn for you to start speaking about your feelings. I want you to go like this with your
0:47:26 face. Animate it. I want, yeah. Let me see a little oomph here. I mean, that’s what I call micro-coaching.
0:47:32 And we roll up our sleeves and get right next to you and teach you how to do it better. We call them
0:47:42 preconditions. Addiction, acting out, psychiatric conditions. Acting out either violence or sexual acting out.
0:47:49 We will not take couples if there’s domestic violence. You go off to a safety program. You go
0:47:54 off to a perpetrator program. I don’t ask people to tell the truth to power if it’s dangerous.
0:48:02 You know, safety for, about the others, sexual acting out, addictions, psychiatric disorders.
0:48:09 RLT therapists will meet with the couple, but only to talk about the issues. What are you going to do
0:48:15 about your depression? What are you going to do about your womanizing? How are we going to settle
0:48:23 this? The idea is it would be bullshit for me to pretend that I can help you and your partner get
0:48:30 closer while you’re still engaged in this stuff. So sobriety first. I will meet with the couple,
0:48:36 but to deal with what you’re not dealing with. Then we can work on your relationship.
0:48:43 So let’s double click on your first book. I don’t want to talk about it because I know
0:48:50 Peter Atiyah, who’s an old friend of mine, of course, very well-known doc these days is a huge
0:48:57 fan of this book. I have not yet read it. I apologize for that, but I would love for you to perhaps
0:49:04 describe what people get wrong about male depression, or we could dive directly into covert depression,
0:49:10 because I’m wondering how many of these preconditions might be explained by depression as
0:49:13 opposed to being separate problems.
0:49:18 First of all, for those who haven’t, please read Peter’s book, Outlive. It’s great. In the last
0:49:25 chapter, it was about his work with me and Esther Perel, about his own psychological work. And also,
0:49:29 if I may, Peter had a podcast that we did together, and he talked about his work with me. It was very
0:49:37 moving. So look those two things up. Male depression. When I wrote that book, it’s 30 years old. It’s
0:49:43 selling as well as my new books, by the way. It’s really been a keeper. Depression was seen as a
0:49:51 woman’s disease, and I argued against that. And what I said is that a lot of men have the same kind of
0:49:58 depression that we normally think of. I call it overt depression. But a lot of men, unlike women,
0:50:06 have what I call covert depression. You don’t see the depression. You see what the man is doing to
0:50:13 defend against the depression. And many of the problems we think of as typically male may be fueled
0:50:23 by depression. So self-medication, rage, philandering, radical withdrawal, all of these may be symptom of
0:50:29 an underlying depression. A lucky guy gets what we call a dual diagnosis. You’re, you know,
0:50:34 forgive me, I can’t be, you know the joke. You’re terminal, I want a second opinion. Okay,
0:50:43 you’re ugly. It’s like, it’s like, okay, the bad news is you’re addicted. And the worst news is
0:50:48 underneath the addiction, you’ve got a depression. Lucky guy gets a dual diagnosis. Unlucky guy gets
0:50:54 one or the other. If you stumble into an addictions person, they’ll clean up your addiction, but they
0:50:57 won’t deal with them. If you go to a psychiatrist, they’ll give you a mass period of depression,
0:51:01 but you’re drinking like a fish. First, you have to deal with the defenses.
0:51:09 When they settle down and move into some level of sobriety, then the underlying depression comes
0:51:15 to, you don’t even have to go after it. It comes up. I say the cure for a covert depression is an
0:51:22 overt depression. And once the pain comes up, you deal with it. But I think part of the reason why
0:51:29 that book has lasted for 30 years is there’s a third piece, which is not only do men express depression
0:51:37 differently, but the ideology is different. Girls and women get depressed because they famously lose their voices
0:51:48 and blame themselves and turn inward. Boys and men get depressed because of what I call normal boyhood trauma
0:51:59 under patriarchy. We are taught at 3, 4, or 5 years old to deny our vulnerability, to disconnect from our feelings,
0:52:08 to disconnect from others, all in the name of autonomy. We cut off half of our humanity.
0:52:15 The feelings, the vulnerability connection, really in some ways the most rich, nourishing parts of what
0:52:22 it means to be a human. And that cut off, which is imposed on boys, I have story after story,
0:52:35 that cut off is traumatic. And it also renders you isolated and lonely. So there’s a lot of trauma.
0:52:42 That trauma becomes depression. That depression becomes acting out of self-medication. And if you
0:52:50 really want to heal someone, you hit all three layers. First, the defenses, then the depression,
0:52:59 then the childhood trauma. How do you think about teasing out when, for instance, addiction is
0:53:07 paired with underlying depression, maybe downstream of it versus independent? Because I suppose there’s
0:53:13 a risk of asking a barber if you need a haircut in the sense you go to the surgeon, they tell you you
0:53:18 need surgery. You go to the fill in the blank, right? They tell you that you need whatever their
0:53:23 specialty happens to be. Just like you mentioned with getting the single diagnosis versus the dual
0:53:30 diagnosis. So how do you determine if something is actually paired with underlying depression, since
0:53:34 that’s the sort of example we’re talking about in men, versus independent?
0:53:39 It’s really simple. When the person starts to get sober, do they get depressed?
0:53:44 And the depression that they get looks just like psychiatric depression.
0:53:48 I see what you’re saying. So if they’re a workaholic and they pair that down, does the
0:53:52 depression then have room to breathe and express itself, basically, when the coping mechanism is
0:53:55 removed in some capacity?
0:54:00 Yeah. As opposed to you remove the coping mechanism and, oh my God, I’m so much better.
0:54:16 But 99 out of 100, you go from sobriety to trauma. You have to deal with the underlying trauma. My great
0:54:24 mentor, Pia Melody, a great legend in the 12-step community, ran the meadows for 70 years. First,
0:54:31 the addiction, then the personality issues, and then underlying childhood trauma. If you don’t deal
0:54:35 with the underlying trauma, it’s going to be hard for that person to stay sober.
0:54:45 What type of approaches or modalities do you favor for working with trauma when you get to that layer?
0:54:51 We like to do trauma work with your partner sitting next to you, and we’re unique in that.
0:54:56 And I’ve got to tell you, I’ve argued against what I call toxic individualism in this culture,
0:55:04 and psychotherapy is up to its eyeballs in supporting individualism and supporting patriarchy.
0:55:09 I want to ask you about this word, patriarchy, because you have so many messages that I think
0:55:17 I want to convey to not just a male audience, but I have a very large male audience, and I feel like
0:55:24 patriarchy can be a very loaded term, and that there are matriarchal or matrilineal,
0:55:29 there are patrilineal societies, both of which function pretty well. And I’m just wondering how
0:55:36 you think about using versus not using that term, because I feel like there’s a risk that you might
0:55:41 turn off men who actually need to hear a lot of what you have to say. How do you think about that?
0:55:48 It is what it is. So let me talk about what I mean, and then we can talk about the marketing of it.
0:55:53 I make a decision between what I call political patriarchy and psychological patriarchy.
0:56:00 And political patriarchy is the oppression of women by men. It’s all over the globe, and
0:56:09 you know, it’s deadly in some cultures. It’s a very real thing. Psychological patriarchy is basically
0:56:17 traditional masculinity writ large. Oh, double back. But psychological patriarchy, traditional
0:56:29 masculinity, guys, listen up, is a system that does damage to everybody. Everybody. And does deep,
0:56:36 deep, deep damage to our relationships. What do I mean by that? Let me just take traditional
0:56:43 masculinity. The essence of traditional masculinity under patriarchy, the overarching system, is
0:56:50 invulnerability. The more invulnerable you are, the more manly you are, the more vulnerable you are,
0:56:56 the more girly you are, and that is not a good thing. And of course, we both know there’s been a huge
0:57:03 resurgence. You know, a backlash. Don’t tell us we’re bad people. I’m not talking about not being
0:57:10 powerful. I’m talking about not being dominant. There’s a difference. Rhianne Eisler talks about
0:57:17 power over versus power with. I want men to be powerful. I also want women to be powerful. I want
0:57:24 all of us to be whole. And what patriarchy does is what Carol Gilligan calls the binary. These human
0:57:33 qualities are feminine. A good man has none of them. These human qualities are masculine. A good woman has
0:57:38 none of them. And it’s what Olga Silverstein called the halving process. You take a whole human being,
0:57:47 you draw a line down the middle, half of humanity say goodbye to. That is not healthy. That’s not good
0:57:54 for anybody. So vulnerability, for example, what we do, the way we quote-unquote turn boys into men
0:58:00 under patriarchy is through disconnection. We teach them to disconnect from their feelings.
0:58:05 There’s hard research. Three, four, five. Little boys have more feelings than little girls,
0:58:10 actually. They’re more sensitive. But by three, four, five, they know better than to open their
0:58:18 mouths and say anything. They’ve read the code. So no vulnerability, no emotion, not too connected to
0:58:24 others. You’re independent. Great. Here’s what I say. I would say it to you if you showed up in my office.
0:58:31 Tim, the things you learned as a boy about what makes a good man are the very qualities that will
0:58:34 ensure that by today’s standards, you’ll be seen as a lousy husband.
0:58:44 Across the board, I’ll just deal with heterosexuals for a moment. Women want men’s hearts. They want
0:58:51 connection. Tell me what the fuck you’re feeling. Open your mouth and share with me. When I come to
0:58:59 you with a feeling, be compassionate and not dismissive. Well, guess what? All of that goes against what was
0:59:06 imposed on you as a boy about how to handle yourself as a man. But one of the things I say is moving men,
0:59:14 women, non-binary folk into true intimacy is synonymous with moving them beyond traditional gender roles,
0:59:21 beyond patriarchy. Men have to move into vulnerability and open their hearts. Women have to move into
0:59:30 assertion with love, not with harshness, but with love. And doing that on both sides moves beyond
0:59:34 anything that this culture teaches us. It’s pioneer work.
0:59:39 All right. Thank you for unpacking that. We might come back to it. I’m happy to talk about that more.
0:59:42 I have follow-up questions, but I don’t want to take us off track with the trauma question,
0:59:49 because you were talking about one of the defining and unusual characteristics by conventional therapy
0:59:57 standards is that RLT does trauma work with the partner present. That’s where I then took us on a
1:00:02 side quest with the question about patriarchy. You know, as a relational therapist who argues against
1:00:09 exaggerated individualism, look, here’s the thing. We’ve never wanted more from our relationships than we do
1:00:14 right now. It’s historically new. We don’t think historically, so we don’t get this. But
1:00:22 our parents, grandparents, a companionable marriage was plenty good enough. But we want more. We want
1:00:27 real intimacy and sustaining. We want to hold hands, walk on the beach, have heart-to-hearts, have great
1:00:35 sex in our 60s and 70s. I mean, we want to be lifelong lovers. This is new. Marriage was never built for that.
1:00:41 Go into Western literature and find me a passion at marriage. All passion is adulterous.
1:00:42 It’s new.
1:00:49 Yeah, it’s new. But we live in an anti-relational culture. That’s patriarchy. We live in a culture
1:00:59 that’s about up, down, wind, lose, right, wrong, no. We have to wake up to ecological wisdom. We’re a team.
1:01:06 We’re in this together. What do you need, honey? It’s in my interest to keep you happy. That’s the
1:01:12 new world order. And, you know, not to disarm man, but I do get these big burly guys, and they say,
1:01:18 why should I have to work so hard to please my wife? And I go, knock, knock. You live with her.
1:01:27 It’s in your interest. That’s what I teach people. It’s in your interest to learn how to do this stuff.
1:01:33 And also, I would just say, for clarification, that you mean to keep someone happy, but in a
1:01:38 interdependent, not codependent way, right? Because it’s easy to go into that fixing mode,
1:01:41 and people think they’re making someone happy.
1:01:45 You’re right. And I didn’t say, it’s in your interest to make them happy.
1:01:48 What I really say is, it’s in your interest to take care of your biosphere.
1:01:55 If you ride in the one-up, at some point we should talk about this. If you’re more in the one-up,
1:02:03 and you’re more entitled, demanding, dominant, you don’t listen, you got to come down off your high
1:02:09 horse. If you ride in the one-down, like a fixer, oh my God, oh my God, my partner’s upset,
1:02:15 codependent. You need to take a breath. What your biosphere needs is for you to be assertive
1:02:24 and be more conflictual and fight a little more. Stand up for yourself. So you have to correct what’s
1:02:31 off. It’s not one-size-fits-all. It’s what’s off for you. If you’re one-up, come down. If you’re one-down,
1:02:38 like a fixer, then assert yourself and take some risks. But both are vulnerability. When we think of
1:02:43 vulnerability, we think of sensitivity. But for a fixer like you, standing up for yourself, and oh my
1:02:51 God, they may get mad at me, that’s vulnerability for you. So what does my biosphere need? You know,
1:02:58 Carol Gilligan says, there can be no voice without relationship. So come down off your high horse if
1:03:05 you’re dominant. There can be no relationship without voice. So I would work with someone like you, and I
1:03:12 would have you, okay, I want you to identify what you’re feeling. I want you to identify what you want
1:03:18 and need right now. Don’t worry about pleasing them. What does Tim want? And I want to teach you how to
1:03:25 articulate that in a way that might get listened to. May I hypothesize about you?
1:03:26 Sure. Go for it.
1:03:31 This could be wrong, but here we go. What I make up, as we say. So you have this dominant,
1:03:33 I’m assuming, father.
1:03:33 Yeah, his father.
1:03:40 And this codependent, unhappy mother. This is what I call the unholy triad of patriarchy.
1:03:46 You wonder why so many men are love avoidant or avoiders. Well, here’s why. You have an
1:03:52 irresponsible or shut down father. You have an unhappy mother. You have, and I guarantee this
1:04:01 was you, a sweet, sensitive, big-hearted young boy. The mother doesn’t have to do a thing to
1:04:07 enmesh him, to use him. That boy looks at his unhappy mother and says, what can I do to make
1:04:13 her happy? And he lets go of what he wants and needs and becomes her caretaker emotionally.
1:04:20 Grows up, and his template for relationship is, I’m a caretaker. I’m a fixer. I got to take care
1:04:27 of them. My needs, nobody gives a shit. So what that breeds, maybe you, maybe not, is what we call
1:04:33 love avoidant. You live behind walls. Because relationships mean I surrender my, you know,
1:04:39 my needs and caretake them. I’m a human, so I need relationships. I pull them in. But once they’re in,
1:04:45 I got to keep them at arm’s length or they’ll eat me alive. So you live behind walls to protect
1:04:48 yourself. That’s that adaptive child. How am I doing?
1:04:56 I mean, you’re 100% spot on. I think at the very end, I had a question in my mind as to
1:05:01 whether I have those types of walls, because I don’t know what they might look like.
1:05:05 So perhaps, could you give me an example of what those might look like? And then I could tell you.
1:05:11 How good are you at identifying what you want in a relationship and assertively going after it?
1:05:17 I’d say pretty good at identifying. Could be a lot better at proactively going after it
1:05:21 and requesting it. Tend to be very indirect. That would be accurate to say for sure.
1:05:27 Yeah. And the cost of that indirectness is you don’t get your needs met, and then resentment grows,
1:05:31 and then whatever. So I have eight million sayings in my mind.
1:05:34 Make him progress. Make him progress. I’ve improved a lot.
1:05:44 I can feel that, by the way. I can feel that. I would teach you, the cure for love avoidance is
1:05:51 negotiation. I would teach you to identify what you want and lean in and have the daring break the rules
1:05:57 and say, hey, you know what? I don’t want to eat Indian tonight. I want to eat Japanese.
1:06:03 And the last two nights, we ate what you wanted, and tonight we’re doing Japanese.
1:06:06 Well, I don’t like that, Tim. Well, okay.
1:06:11 And, you know, for you fixers, I say, let the bad thing happen.
1:06:18 You know, that adaptive child part of you is petrified of conflict. You don’t want to make dad
1:06:23 angry, and you don’t want to make mom unhappy. You’re a fixer. You’re a good boy, and you want
1:06:30 to bring peace. Well, this is where trauma enters into our relationship. That adaptive child part of
1:06:37 you has no model for healthy conflict. It’s either yelling and screaming or giving in.
1:06:43 And, you know, we children, we look at mom and dad, we go, I’ll be that one. You looked at mom,
1:06:49 I’ll be that one. I don’t want to be dad. I don’t want to be that aggressive. So you don’t have a
1:06:55 healthy template for healthy aggression. Didn’t have that model. Yeah. Yeah, me too. I had a violent
1:07:02 father. I would teach you how to have healthy conflict and feel good about that, but it would be
1:07:11 very scary initially. So you nailed a couple of things that I want to revisit. So the first,
1:07:16 and this will come back into the patriarchy thing too, because what you do, Terry, is so powerful and
1:07:21 so important. I want as many men to listen to it as possible, which is why I’m talking about the
1:07:26 patriarchy piece. It’s not because I disagree with a lot of what you’re saying, although I do have some
1:07:32 clarifying questions. So one thing you said is, you hypothesized, right? The story you make up is
1:07:38 that I was very, very sensitive, or I was a very sensitive young kid, which is true. I was very
1:07:44 sensitive, much more so than my schoolmates. And then for a host of reasons, really also including
1:07:51 some pretty terrible childhood abuse, not from my family, ended up trying to, yeah, I’ve written about
1:07:58 it extensively, but yeah, maybe another time. But the upshot of it is that I turned that off, right?
1:08:04 Emotions, insensitivity, or reliability. So I completely compartmentalized that, locked it, put it
1:08:11 away. And that continued to be the case. And I paid a lot for that. There was some upside. There’s some
1:08:15 upside. I had a very high pain tolerance. I could handle certain things. I could be very aggressive and
1:08:22 take a lot of shots in the course of doing various things, competitive sports, business, whatever. So
1:08:27 I had some quote-unquote success from that, but there was a lot of collateral damage. And then around
1:08:35 2013, for a number of reasons, including a relationship I thought was going to end in marriage and kids
1:08:45 coming to a halt, decided to reopen the doors and sort of reactivate that sensitivity.
1:08:49 So that’s been a project for the last 12 years or so.
1:08:52 Brilliant and courageous, both. Congratulations.
1:08:59 Thank you. Thank you. And so that’s been an incredibly rewarding and challenging path thus far,
1:09:05 and it continues. I don’t regret having done that. My question, I suppose, and this might seem a little
1:09:11 out of left field, is that when you’re talking about men being available to their partners and
1:09:19 emotionally attuned, and I know I’m using different vocabulary. I agree with all of that. But I suppose
1:09:27 some people listening might feel like men and women might be positioned as equivalents in a lot of ways,
1:09:33 sort of emotional doppelgangers. And I’m just wondering if you feel like there are any patterns in terms of
1:09:38 male and female differences that you spot again and again that don’t need to be fixed, that they’re
1:09:43 actually just, whether intrinsic or otherwise, sort of differences to embrace. And I’m just curious
1:09:49 what your thoughts are there. I tend to think there are, but I’m curious what your position is on that.
1:10:00 I don’t know. Who are we beyond our socialization? I don’t know. What I do know is that the bifurcation
1:10:06 of men and women under patriarchal culture, which is virtually ubiquitous in the world,
1:10:17 is so strong. You gave up your sensitivity because your sensitivity was punished. And the playground is the
1:10:24 greatest enforcer of traditional roles. You learn. Three, four, five-year-old boys learn to keep their
1:10:31 mouths shut or they’re going to get punished. And for the guys out there, I got to say, for a girl to
1:10:39 cross into boy land is like, no, she’ll get some shit. For a boy to cross into girl land evokes violence,
1:10:47 emotional, and I’m sorry, at times, even physical violence. It’s dangerous to break the rules.
1:10:55 It’s dangerous to stand up for being whole in this culture. And I talked to parents about having their
1:10:59 boys be literate, gender literate. Can I tell you a story?
1:11:01 Of course. I love your stories.
1:11:10 So when my kids were little, I’ve got two kids. One’s a massive jock, Justin, and one is a gay doctor,
1:11:16 ballet dancer, danced professionally, and he’s got five. Anyway, they were both amazing and very,
1:11:23 very different kids. And we went off to vacation, like the Dominican Republic, and they had cornrows
1:11:31 put in their hair. The kids did that. My little one, Alexander, who turned out to grow up to be gay,
1:11:37 did his whole head in cornrows. And they were like green, no, pink and gold, his favorite color.
1:11:43 His older brother, Justin, the jock, had a couple of like Keith Richards, cool rock and roll, you know.
1:11:47 All right, it’s time to go to school. We’re back from vacation.
1:11:53 Belinda and I sit him down and go, here’s the deal. If you go to school with that in your hair,
1:11:58 you may get crap from the other kids. If you don’t go to school with that in your hair,
1:12:03 you may feel like you’ve missed out on expressing yourself. And it could be the kids are going to love
1:12:09 that stuff in your hair. I don’t know. What do you guys want to do? It’s not my decision, it’s yours.
1:12:14 And we talked to boys about, do you want to express yourself and deal with the crap you’re
1:12:21 going to get? Or do you want to comply and deal with the inauthenticity of that? It’s your choice,
1:12:27 not ours. I don’t make those choices for my boys, but it’s an on-the-table conversation.
1:12:34 So they’ve all said, sure. And as the older one, Dustin, the Keith Richards, puts his foot in the car,
1:12:41 goes, I can’t do it. And we wind up cutting his hair. His brother, Mr. Pink and Gold,
1:12:48 looks like the toast of the town, but it could have gone another way. So I would teach young Tim
1:12:57 how to negotiate his sensitivities so that when they were welcome, they were overt. And when they were
1:13:04 unwelcome, you put up a shield of toughness to protect yourself and having some sense of which
1:13:05 moment is which.
1:13:11 How did you navigate that with your boys? Like, how did you raise your boys? I’d be so curious to hear
1:13:20 more about it because there is a time to, it’s not limited to men, of course, or boys, but I think
1:13:25 there’s a lot of value placed. And I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing on competition and
1:13:30 winning and so on and so forth. And I’m just so curious, since you mentioned the jock in particular,
1:13:34 how did you think about raising those two boys? And did you raise them any differently?
1:13:41 I did. No, they were both raised similarly to one another, but they’re very different from the
1:13:47 culture at large. It’s funny, we just had our first relational life therapy annual conference,
1:13:53 and my sons got on stage with me. And the older one, Justin, the jock, was very funny. He looked at the
1:14:00 crowd and he said, you know, being the son of two therapists, the way I grew up, you want to talk to
1:14:07 me about how your nanny had sex with you when you were five or your deepest anxiety, I’m there,
1:14:13 no problem. It took me into my 20s to learn how to sit on a bar stool, have a beer and talk to guys
1:14:24 about a game. Nobody’s perfect. You know, the thing is, I want whole people. And going back to people
1:14:31 may be turned off by what I’m saying, it absolutely kills me when people describe my work as Terry’s
1:14:41 I’m trying to feminize men. No, I want whole human beings. I want smart, sexy, competent women. I want
1:14:51 powerful, big-hearted, compassionate men. We don’t need to have ourselves in compliance to the world order.
1:15:01 We can be whole. And the issue is, whole and adaptable. What is this moment calling for? And
1:15:03 I got to tell this story. This is one of my favorite stories.
1:15:04 Please.
1:15:11 So I had the privilege of going to Maasai land in Tanzania with another family who knew this
1:15:19 particular compound, these guys, very well. It took 10 hours of driving to get to them. They were
1:15:25 remote. And this is the real deal. I mean, you know, we’re talking, you know, earlobes down here and
1:15:29 everybody had, and they have spears and they kill lions. And these are real warriors.
1:15:37 So I had a men’s group with the elders for four nights running, and we talked about everything.
1:15:43 So I go like this to them. In the United States, there’s a debate about what makes a good man,
1:15:49 Marani, warrior, all one word. What makes a good Marani? Some people say a good Marani is sensitive
1:15:56 and thoughtful and kind. Some people say a good Marani is fierce and tough and no bullshit.
1:15:59 What do you guys think? Which is it? True story, Tim.
1:16:05 So this little guy has got to be 4’3 and 1,000 years old, crooks his finger, and he sounds like
1:16:12 he’s totally pissed at me. And it goes from Maasai to Swahili to English to Swahili. And this is what
1:16:19 he says. I have no interest in talking to you about what makes a good Marani. I could care less. But I
1:16:25 will talk to you about what makes a great Marani. He said, when the moment calls for fierceness,
1:16:31 a good Marani will kill you. Don’t mess with him. I mean, he’ll kill you. When the moment
1:16:36 calls for a good man calls for tenderness, a good Marani will lay down his sword and shield and be
1:16:43 sweet like a baby. A great Marani is a man who knows which moment is when.
1:16:45 That’s good. Yeah, that’s very good.
1:16:52 I want whole people who can adapt to what’s in front of them. That’s health.
1:17:04 How did you and your wife think about changing how you would raise your kids from how you were raised?
1:17:10 How do you think about that? And just be curious to hear you approach that from whatever angle makes
1:17:10 sense.
1:17:17 Well, as you probably know, both my wife and I came from terrible trauma, terribly violent families.
1:17:25 I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. Four books, 40 years. Here’s probably my single most famous quote.
1:17:29 You know, they say it’s the height of pretension to quote yourself, but I’ll do it.
1:17:39 Family pathology rolls from generation to generation like a fire in the woods, taking down everything in
1:17:46 its path until one person in one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames.
1:17:53 That person brings peace to their ancestors and spares the children that follow.
1:18:02 Belinda and I made a rock solid commitment that we were not going to leak the kind of reactivity
1:18:10 and violence that we grew up with on our kids. And we didn’t. We did it on each other. We had a real
1:18:19 rock’em sock’em marriage for years. We were both fighters, but we spared the children. And they know that.
1:18:27 And they’re really robust, radiantly healthy boys. I am the son of an angry, depressed father.
1:18:35 He was the son of an angry, depressed father. I have two boys. Neither of them say that,
1:18:41 and neither were their children. And that is the greatest achievement of my life.
1:18:48 I mean, it’s an amazing achievement. And I’d love to get a little more, not microscopic,
1:18:54 but granular in the sense that a lot of people say they want to change. A lot of people have
1:18:58 New Year’s resolutions and they say, you know what? I’m not going to be the diabetic my parent
1:19:03 was because I can fix it. I can change it. And they don’t change. So I’m wondering how,
1:19:09 especially since you had the rock’em sock’em experience in your marriage, what were the actions
1:19:18 you took or the strategies you had to check yourselves and ensure that you weren’t letting
1:19:22 those older inherited behaviors bleed into your parenting?
1:19:28 Well, first of all, get help. Men don’t get help. In the book one, I said,
1:19:32 a man is about as likely to get help for depression as he is to ask for directions.
1:19:39 You know, if you come from a tough background, I say this to the people I work with all the time.
1:19:48 You can’t come from what you came from and have the happy, healthy family you want without doing
1:19:53 a shitload of therapy, a shitload of work. Men’s groups, women’s groups, 12-step groups,
1:19:59 therapy, but therapy that works. But the first thing I want to say is, thank God you don’t have
1:20:04 to do this on your own because you won’t know what to do. Get help. And get help that helps.
1:20:12 Years and years of spiritual work. I’ve been meditating over 50 years and all stripe of
1:20:17 therapy work. There’s a saying, therapists are people who need to be in therapy 40 hours a week.
1:20:24 I became a professional therapist to heal myself. And then I became a family therapist to learn how to
1:20:31 have a relationship. I mean, I was so far behind the starting gate. In 12-step, one of these folks say
1:20:41 is the last phase is gratitude. I was so on the ropes. Unlike a lot of people, if I did my defaults,
1:20:46 I’d be dead now. That’s true. A lot of my friends that I grew up with are dead. If I did what I learned,
1:20:57 I’d be dead. I had no choice but to go under or reconfigure myself. And that’s a gift. The same
1:21:02 with Belinda. And we are. We’re reconstructed human beings. Belinda calls us retreads, you know,
1:21:09 like a tire. And I love reconstructed human beings. We have a lot of depth. And if I can do it, you can
1:21:14 do it. There’s a way to do it, no matter where you come from. But you’ve got to be willing to do the
1:21:16 work. And it’s hard goddamn work.
1:21:23 What do your group therapy experiences look like? I remember, I don’t think you would mind
1:21:28 me saying this. I’ll double check with them after we finish recording. But Kevin went through a group,
1:21:33 I want to say, for lack of a better way to describe it, sort of therapy experience with seven or eight
1:21:38 people. He didn’t tell me anything. Men. Men. And he didn’t tell me anything about the content,
1:21:43 of course. But it had a really big impact on him. And I’m curious what the format was,
1:21:47 what the rules looked like for a men’s group like that.
1:21:52 We start off with check-ins. How’s everybody doing? What’s on your mind?
1:22:02 And then either we move into a theme that emerges. So my practice is 10 full-pay people and four pro
1:22:09 bono at any given time. And the 10 who pay, they tend to be high rollers. So here’s a group of some of
1:22:17 the bigger mover and shaker guys in the world right now. We had a hilarious time talking for two hours
1:22:24 about how we were all petrified of our wives. So sometimes a theme will emerge. Fathers, anger,
1:22:33 self-medication, being afraid of our wife. And or as the check-in evolves, one person will like pop.
1:22:44 And I’ll go, Dave, do trauma work with you. We’re not going to do it. Just go around anyway. But if
1:22:50 you were in the group, at some point, I would say, I want to go back to that little boy who learned how
1:22:58 to be a fixer. How old were you when you first adopted that? Four or five is whatever it was. Close your
1:23:06 eyes, go into your body. Find that four-year-old boy. Ask him to come out and sit in a chair facing
1:23:12 you. What’s he look like? How do you feel toward him? What do you want to say to him? What does he need to
1:23:17 hear from you? What’s it like for him? How does he respond to what you just said? And I get into a dialogue
1:23:26 between you and this little boy. Of course, it’s very emotional. And it ends always with you saying to that
1:23:36 little part of you, I’m here now. I can take care of you. Your angry partner may not be available,
1:23:45 and that’s frightening to you. But I’m available. We don’t need her. You turn to me. And that’s
1:23:52 transformative. So I do deep trauma work in the men’s group, or we do a theme, or we just all hang out and
1:23:56 talk about what’s going on in our lives. Any or all of the boat.
1:24:02 Are there any guidelines for how people can respond to what someone else says or discloses?
1:24:07 Or I’m just thinking there are sometimes rules in organizations like the Entrepreneur’s Organization
1:24:14 and in forums and things like this, in these smaller sized groups. If somebody was thinking about
1:24:18 creating something like this for themselves, and I know it’d be good to have a professional involved,
1:24:23 of course. But are there any other rules or guidelines that you think are helpful in these
1:24:23 types of groups?
1:24:28 As you know, I have 8 million sayings, and here’s one of them. Generally speaking, unsolicited advice
1:24:29 doesn’t go very well.
1:24:31 Yeah.
1:24:38 So we all learn to have good boundaries in these groups, which we can double back and
1:24:45 talk about. A core principle of RLT is what we call full respect living. I may disagree with
1:24:52 how you think, but I hold you in respect. It’s a part of the culture of the group that we speak
1:24:59 to one another with humility. This is what I’m making up, Tim. And with respect. No one in these
1:25:04 groups that, well, a fucking asshole. How can you do this? We just don’t talk to each other that way.
1:25:07 And I never had to make that explicit. It just happens.
1:25:13 When you were talking about identifying the age of the little boy and having him sit in the chair,
1:25:20 for some people listening, they might hear echoes of, say, internal family systems, IFS. Does your
1:25:25 approach, is it similar to that? Does it differ from it? How do you think about that?
1:25:30 Let’s do this briefly, because this could be a whole. There are some similarities. For example,
1:25:38 there’s a three-part part of the psyche. What I call the wise adult has some correlation to what
1:25:43 Dick calls self. What he calls protectors and managers has some correlation to what I call the
1:25:48 adaptive child. And his exile is my wounded child. So there’s some similarities, but there are also some
1:25:55 very distinct differences. I don’t believe that the adaptations that you learned as a kid are all
1:26:04 defensive, are all about protecting the wound. And I believe there are bad parts. Dick is almost a
1:26:10 religious fervor that there’s no such thing as a bad part. No, there are grandiose, retaliatory parts
1:26:17 of you that you really need to corral. And there’s also entitlement and privilege. And it’s not all
1:26:24 grouped around protecting a vulnerability. We think that in psychiatry, too. We think all grandiose
1:26:30 behavior is a defense against shame. No, some grandiose behavior is just entitlement and hatred.
1:26:36 That’s part of our humanity. You know, I don’t think Hitler killed millions of Jews because he was
1:26:43 protecting a vulnerable part of himself. There’s more to it than that. So we take on some of the
1:26:52 issues of grandiosity and entitlement and some of the less savory parts of our humanity in a way that
1:27:00 I don’t think IFS quite does. Broadly speaking, do you think there are any new or particular challenges
1:27:07 with modern relationships, whether it be dating or marriage? Anything that is relatively kind of new
1:27:14 on the scene, in your opinion? Well, polyamory is interesting. Yeah, let’s talk about it. Fire away.
1:27:21 Belinda and I spent three months in Costa Rica and amongst the young expats who can’t find a monogamous
1:27:30 couple anywhere. And polyamory is a real challenge. Monogamy is the challenge, too. I used to say,
1:27:38 monogamy is unnatural and open marriage is like, wow, hold on. So people trying to, you know,
1:27:46 there are people experimenting with different models of intimacy. And okay, open the doors and
1:27:53 there are challenges. Yeah. I remember I was chatting with someone who had experimented with
1:28:04 every variant of polyamory and she referred to it as polyagony. That was her label for it. But I would
1:28:09 love to know, are there challenges for monogamy now that didn’t seem to exist 20 or 30 years ago
1:28:16 or that are just much more exaggerated now? Yeah, a number of things. First of all,
1:28:23 we men are trying to figure out what the hell we are. And, you know, someone wants to describe my work
1:28:29 as women have had a revolution and now men have to deal with it and no one knows what to do. Women have
1:28:38 had a revolution and they are speaking up and they are insisting on intimacy from us guys in ways that are
1:28:46 exactly in conflict with our traditional role as men. You know, Eric Erickson said,
1:28:54 it’s a sign of a healthy culture that socialization practices in childhood equip you to succeed in your
1:29:01 adult roles. And it’s the sign of a culture in transition when there’s a disjuncture between the
1:29:08 two. And for men, this is this juncture. What traditional masculinity teaches you as a boy,
1:29:16 whether you want it or not, often through punishment, by today’s standards, will give you problems in your
1:29:21 relationship. You got to be vulnerable. You got to open your heart. Literally, you have to reconfigure
1:29:28 masculinity in order to be a good partner these days. And people need help with that. The cultural
1:29:36 response to feminism and women’s empowerment has been a big backlash. You know, the manosphere and
1:29:46 that sobering movie, Adolescence, there’s a big resurgence of, I’m a man and I’m tired of being told
1:29:52 I’m bad and go screw yourself. It ain’t going to work. The toothpaste ain’t going back in the tube.
1:29:59 So what I say is, I don’t want women to stand down. I want men to stand up and meet these new demands.
1:30:03 Look, I’ve been saying this for 40 years and research has finally caught up with me.
1:30:11 personality, intimacy, open-hearted connection. The ace that we RLT therapists have in our back
1:30:17 packet is that’s what we human beings are designed for. We’re designed to be intimate. Not being
1:30:25 intimate, I know you do a lot of great work with health on your podcast. Not being intimate is as bad
1:30:30 for your body as smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes a day. This is a hard black and white
1:30:38 research. We are born to be intimate. Moving beyond traditional gender roles is the only way to get
1:30:48 there. So stop whining, stand up, and learn a few relational skills. It’s good for you. It’s good for
1:30:54 your body. You’ll live longer. It’s good for your marriage, and it’s good for your children. And let me
1:30:59 help you learn how to do this better. That’s revolutionary. You’ve got a lot of people out
1:31:05 there. I’m so happy to be on this podcast with you, truly. You’ve got a lot of people out there.
1:31:14 I’m mad as hell, and I’m not putting up with it. We men need to reclaim our power. No. We need to open
1:31:19 our hearts and listen. And listen, here’s a simple way. You don’t like patriarchy. Here’s what I said.
1:31:27 I teach the men I work with to learn to become family men. Here’s how you’re a family man. You
1:31:33 decentralize yourself. I wrote this, and I don’t want to talk about it. A boy’s question of the world
1:31:40 is what he got for me. A man’s question of the world is what’s needed here. And I teach men to show up as
1:31:46 men and not boys. What’s needed here? You know, research on happiness is, I like black and white
1:31:54 research. If you get a gift, you’re happy. You get happier for a bit. If you give a gift, you’re even
1:32:05 happier and longer than if you get it. What men need to understand is it’s good for us to be empowered,
1:32:14 be assertive, and also to be connected and show up and ask ourselves, what’s needed here? How do I need
1:32:16 to show up here? That’s a man.
1:32:23 I like that framing, the questions and how they differ for boys and men. It does, I think, perhaps to some
1:32:29 listeners sound like men have a lot of heavy lifting to do, and women have had this revolution, and all is
1:32:37 well in woman land. Is there such a thing as toxic femininity? Is there collateral damage to all these societal
1:32:44 shifts? Yes. I’m glad you brought this up. Because in family therapy, we talk about first and second
1:32:51 order change. First order change is just a rearrangement. You know, Tommy’s truant. You get
1:32:56 Tommy and I be truant, and then Sally starts pooping her pants. It’s like, okay, well, rearranging the
1:33:03 furniture. Second order change is a revolution. No kid has to be symptomatic. In our culture,
1:33:11 there’s a lot of what I call individual empowerment. I was weak. Now I’m strong. Go screw
1:33:19 yourself. I am woman. I have found my voice. Hear me roar. No. And you get a lot of, I’m going to get
1:33:24 into trouble, but too bad. You get a lot of people in that traditional feminine side of the equation.
1:33:31 It doesn’t matter what body you’re in. You’re, as a fixer, on that feminine side. You get a lot of,
1:33:37 the people on the feminine side move from disempowerment to individual empowerment. I call
1:33:45 it, I was weak. Now I’m strong. Go screw yourself. And everybody will cheer. Mom, dad, therapists,
1:33:54 12-step sponsors, your men’s group. No. Relational empowerment is the next step. I was weak. Now I’m
1:34:00 strong. I’m going to go toe to toe with you. I’m going to tell you just what I want and need. Now
1:34:06 listen to this. What could I give you to help you to do that for me? Who sounds like that? We’re a team.
1:34:13 I love you. What do you need? Let’s work together. That’s the next step. And a lot of women,
1:34:20 early stage feminism, move from disempowerment to individual empowerment. You know, as a couple
1:34:26 therapists, often the bane of my existence is an individual therapist who’s individually empowered
1:34:34 their client right out of a workable relationship. No, I was weak. Now I’m strong. I love you. We’re a
1:34:39 team. Let’s roll up our sleeves and work on this together. That’s the new world order.
1:34:44 So we’ve covered a lot of ground. I’m looking at all my notes. There’s a lot that we, I’m sure,
1:34:49 could cover, but are there any other tools that you would like to cover?
1:34:55 Yes. I want to go back and talk about relational empowerment versus individual empowerment.
1:34:56 Right.
1:35:03 Because here’s how I say it. Under patriarchy, you can either be connected,
1:35:10 that’s you, the fixer, accommodating, self-sacrificing, peacemaking,
1:35:15 or you can be assertive. That’s more traditionally, quote-unquote, masculine,
1:35:21 independent, competent, aggressive. But you can’t be both at the same time
1:35:27 because power is power over. When you move into power, you break connection. That’s individual
1:35:34 empowerment. I was weak. Now I’m strong. I don’t care how I sound. Just listen. No, you do care how
1:35:40 you sound or you’re not going to get listened to. I teach people, and particularly women in this one,
1:35:45 or whoever’s coming up from the one down, what I call loving power.
1:35:50 And could you just, for the sake of revisiting, just describe one up, one down, one more time?
1:35:52 Because people may not have gotten that.
1:35:59 It’s what Pia called my great mentor coming out from under the great lie that a human being could
1:36:07 be inherently superior or inferior to another human being. Healthy self-esteem, which I have to teach
1:36:14 people in this culture, comes from the inside out. You’re here. You’re worthy. You’re lovable.
1:36:21 You’re a good human being because you’re breathing, period. And your essential worth can’t be added to,
1:36:28 can’t be subtracted from. This is democracy. This is one person, one vote. We’re all equal under the law
1:36:35 until recently. Anyway. This is democracy. But we don’t live like this. We live in the world of patriarchy,
1:36:44 which is one up, one down, superior, inferior, better than, less than, all day long. And the one down,
1:36:53 shame, inferiority, helplessness, defectiveness, unlovability. For 50 years, my field has focused on
1:37:00 helping people come up from that one down. Good. But we’ve almost totally ignored helping people come
1:37:08 down from the one up. Entitlement, anger, judgment, contempt, self-righteous indignation,
1:37:14 all forms of grandiosity. There’s a lot of ink now being spilled on the so-called narcissistic
1:37:20 partner, which is almost always a man. And the idea is they can’t be treated, leave them. Bullshit.
1:37:26 That’s more individual empowerment. We treat grandiose man, breakfast, lunch, and dinner in
1:37:34 RLT. Come down from that entitlement. Come down from that contempt. It’s poison for you. Let me teach
1:37:41 you how to do it. You’ll be happier. And we do. We effectively help people come down from the one up.
1:37:47 How do you do that? Just because people probably view this as very unfamiliar territory, as you mentioned,
1:37:54 50 years of bringing people up from one down. But how do you bring someone down a step back to
1:38:01 baseline from grandiosity? You have to wake them up. There are three phases to RLT. The first we call
1:38:09 waking up the client, which is loving confrontation, which most therapy doesn’t do. Once we get what you’re
1:38:15 doing, that will never work. And if you’re riding the one up, your grandiosity, then we move into trauma
1:38:23 work. What set you up to do that? And then we teach you skills. It’s all three. IFS doesn’t teach skills,
1:38:29 by the way. A lot of trauma people think you remove the trauma. You don’t need to teach skills and wishful
1:38:35 thinking. Anyway, so first we confront what you’re doing. Then we go back to your childhood roots and where
1:38:42 it came from and help you with that. Then we teach you new skills to replace it with. Why should you come
1:38:52 down from your rage and dominance and control? Why? Well, how’s it working for you? I talk about poison
1:38:59 privilege. And let me say this, and this is particularly true for men. You know, God in her wisdom has given me
1:39:08 access to the dream. The real American dream is that if you have money and fame,
1:39:15 it will transmute you. You’ll become a demigod and you’ll be happy. I treat those people. They’re not
1:39:21 happy. They’ve done well in the world, but they’re not happy between their ears and they’re miserable to
1:39:29 live with. Some so-called expert got on television and talked about aspirational masculinity and Elon Musk,
1:39:35 go to the moon. Great. Be the richest man in the world. Great. You want to be married to that guy?
1:39:43 You want to be that guy’s kid? Good luck. All of the people I treat are incredible successes in the
1:39:51 world and a mess inside. Why? The first thing I teach is the difference between gratification and what I
1:39:58 call relational joy. Gratification is pleasure, short-term pleasure. You make a million bucks,
1:40:05 great. Pretty girl flirts with you, great. I like pleasure in its place. Relational joy, which many
1:40:12 of the people I, the grandiose people in particular, I have no idea what I’m talking about. Relational joy
1:40:19 is the deeper down pleasure of just being there and being connected. And many of the grandiose people I work
1:40:24 with simply don’t know what relational joy is. They’ve lived their whole life for gratification
1:40:30 and it’s empty and they feel the emptiness and the people they live with are fed up with them and
1:40:38 they certainly feel that. So what I have to offer is relational joy. That’s the ace in my pocket because
1:40:44 that’s what we’re born for. That’s the only thing that will make you happy. Let me teach you to come down
1:40:51 off your perch and enter into being a human being like the rest of us. And let me teach you to really
1:40:58 look at what you’ve been doing. Can I tell you a story? Yes, always. A guy came in and he was quote
1:41:03 unquote depressed. Another one of these guys with five therapists under his belt. Nobody’s been able to
1:41:10 help him. And he’s on the break of divorce. And I listened to him and I go, I can’t help you with
1:41:17 your depression, but I can save your marriage. Okay. But you know, you have a very, this is a guy,
1:41:23 he literally go to work, come home, flop on the couch. His wife would be running around. They’d all have
1:41:28 dinner. She’d do the homework with the kids. She’d put them to bed and then he’d slump off the bed and go to
1:41:35 sleep, get up the next day and go to work. She’d be ready to divorce him. So you have a very mysterious
1:41:45 depression. It goes into remission at 845 and it comes roaring back at 515. When you’re at work, you manage
1:41:52 the function. When you’re at home, you’re on the couch. A million people have tried to help you with your
1:41:57 depression. I can’t, I’m not going to try. You’re depressed. Sorry. Been there. Here’s what I want
1:42:05 to tell you. True. Here’s what I want to tell you. Says what? Get off the couch. Go do homework with
1:42:11 your kids. Go help your wife with your dishes. You manage to pull yourself out of yourself from nine to
1:42:19 five. You give yourself a pass when you get home. You’re going to wind up divorced and you’re going to do
1:42:29 great damage to your children. And he looks at his wife and he says, I realize I’ve really abandoned you
1:42:36 in this family. And I made excuses for myself all these years. And he starts to cry. That’s remorse.
1:42:44 That’s open heartedness. I say he’s come out of the coldness of outer space into the warmth of connection
1:42:54 through remorse. Oh my God, I see what I’ve been doing to you. I’m so sorry. And I looked at him
1:43:00 and I said, as I say to so many people in that moment, I say to him, welcome to the planet earth.
1:43:05 Welcome to the human race. It’s been really lonely up there, hasn’t it?
1:43:11 Well, Terry, you have a lot of resources and a lot of books. Who should start where? In other words,
1:43:16 do you suggest people start with any particular book or resource? If they have a particular
1:43:23 challenge or issue, where would you point them? How can we provide a roadmap for people who want to
1:43:33 explore more of Terry real? Do the social media thing at real Terry real that covers all the social
1:43:41 media at real Terry real. Go to my website, Terry real.com. I’m pleased to say we have a lot of
1:43:47 offerings now online for the general public, of course, on self-esteem, of course, on healthy boundaries,
1:43:53 courses on relationship skills. We have little mini courses, how to come back from infidelity.
1:44:00 We have particular topic courses now that are followed up by online groups that you can join.
1:44:06 So if you’re coming back from infidelity, here’s a three-hour workshop and here’s an ongoing group you
1:44:15 can be part of. We’re doing more and more of that. In terms of books, I like Us, the new book. I like,
1:44:20 I don’t want to talk about it, the old book. And I like Fierce Intimacy. I like all three of those.
1:44:25 Yeah. Fierce Intimacy. It is quite funny because I loved Fierce Intimacy and I wanted to find a
1:44:32 Kindle edition to highlight. And could you explain why there isn’t one, at least as it stands right
1:44:39 now? It’s audio. Sounds to ask me to, you know, it’s one of those things, God was with me. I sat in
1:44:46 a booth, no notes, and I just talked for three days. And that’s Fierce Intimacy. It’s insane for
1:44:50 people who want to listen to it. You know, there’s certain people, maybe at that point,
1:44:56 the spirit was at your back. And similarly, I remember at one point I was using a meditation
1:45:00 app designed by Sam Harris, and he had this interlude, which was this commentary, and it was
1:45:04 five or 10 minutes long. And I said, could you please send me the text? Could you send me the
1:45:09 Google doc? And he said, what text? I said, what do you mean, what text? He goes, I just got in the
1:45:13 booth and riffed for 10 minutes. And I was like, okay, there are levels and then there are levels.
1:45:18 So nicely done on Fierce Intimacy. Thank you. Yeah, just a few more questions. And everybody
1:45:23 should go to TerryReal.com. I’m sure that the socials are also available from TerryReal.com.
1:45:27 And we’ll link to everything we’ve discussed in the show notes. Outside of your own books,
1:45:33 are there any books that you have gifted frequently to other people or re-read
1:45:37 more than once yourself that come to mind?
1:45:42 I’m a big fan of Jim Gilligan’s book, Violence. It’s not an easy read.
1:45:44 What was the name of the book again?
1:45:45 Violence.
1:45:46 Oh, violence.
1:45:52 Yeah. Jim was the medical director of the Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
1:45:56 And he worked with serial killers. He worked with Hannibal the Cannibal.
1:46:04 And he starts off as a young man taking this over. And he says to himself, if I can figure
1:46:09 out the dynamics of these guys, I can figure out what violence is. And he does in the book.
1:46:12 So that’s been a great inspiration to me.
1:46:15 Why has that been an inspiration to you?
1:46:24 I deal with male violence. I deal with violence. And both Jim and I agree that violence is the shunting
1:46:32 from the one down to the one up. From shame to grandiosity. From helplessness to attack.
1:46:37 And so it’s really, it took him 25 years to write that book and it shows.
1:46:46 You know, not to drift, but when 9-11 happened, I wrote an op-ed piece that nobody published.
1:46:53 In the piece I said, this is the first time we’ve been hit on American soil. This is a national trauma.
1:47:00 And like anything we’ve faced before. And as a trauma expert, I know that you have two choices.
1:47:07 You can tolerate the discomfort of sitting with the vulnerability and pain of that trauma.
1:47:15 And maybe asking some tough questions about why and what needs to happen. Or you can escape that
1:47:22 discomfort by a flight into one up, grandiosity, judgment, contempt, and attack.
1:47:30 And my hope for this country is we join together in the vulnerability rather than escape into attack.
1:47:33 Nobody published that. Two weeks later, we were in Iraq.
1:47:49 So I like the book. I like the book. I want people to resist the temptation of flying from discomfort into one up, superiority, contempt, judgment, and attack.
1:47:58 On all sides, the left and the right. The left is not shy about moving into self-righteous indignation and contempt either.
1:48:10 I’ll put my body on the line and be on the streets protesting your agenda and still hold you in regard as a human being.
1:48:22 I don’t have to dehumanize you in order to fight you. Gandhi knew that. Martin Luther King knows that. That wisdom is being lost all over the globe right now. It needs to be rekindled.
1:48:26 Any other books that come to mind besides violence?
1:48:28 I like Raymond Chandler.
1:48:31 Yeah, Raymond Chandler is amazing.
1:48:35 Where would you have to go start? Or do you have a favorite?
1:48:45 You know, I love lines. Belinda made my day by giving me a book called The Great One-Liners from Noir. I like noir. It’s a big sleep, I guess.
1:48:52 There’s a great line. When Humphrey Brogard meets Lauren Bacall playing Sam Spade, she says,
1:48:55 Oh, I see you met my little sister. He says,
1:48:59 Yeah. She tried to sit on my lap. I was sitting up at the time.
1:49:06 Now that’s writing.
1:49:25 All right. So speaking of one-liners, just a few more questions and then we’ll wind to a close. If you had a billboard, metaphorically speaking, just to get a message, a line, a quote, a question, anything like that to many, many millions of people, what might you put on that billboard?
1:49:32 Have the courage to move beyond the defaults you were handed and do it with help.
1:49:42 Terry, thank you for taking the time today. It’s so nice to see you again. I really appreciate you carving out the time, being flexible on Start Time and covering so much ground as well.
1:49:56 You’re a wonderful interviewer, Tim. And I’m sure you’re going to edit this out, but if I dare say it, even the little I know you, I’ve grown fond of you. I’m rooting for you. So what a service you’re offering. And thank you for having me on.
1:50:19 Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Terry. And to everybody listening, we will have links to everything in the show notes as per usual at Tim.blog slash podcast. Just search Terry or Terry real and it’ll pop right up. And until next time, as always, be a bit kinder than is necessary to others, but also to yourself. Don’t forget the last piece. And thanks for tuning in.
1:50:31 Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?
1:50:40 Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.
1:51:03 It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I’ve found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It’s kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.
1:51:18 And these strange esoteric things end up in my field. And then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.
1:51:28 If you’d like to try it out, just go to Tim dot blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, Tim dot blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you’ll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.
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0:00:04 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of
0:00:11 The Tim Ferriss Show. Ohayou gozaimasu. I am recording this from my hotel room in Tokyo,
0:00:19 Japan, where I am in Jinkumai and headed on the road yet again for some more adventures
0:00:25 and then back to the US. And when I’m doing this, aside from keeping in mind things like
0:00:31 the mini retirement and setting up systems that persist beyond your return to your home,
0:00:37 there are many tools that I still use to this day from the book that started it all,
0:00:45 The 4-Hour Workweek. It came out in 2007, was revised in 2009, and yet it was one of Amazon’s
0:00:51 top 10 most highlighted books of all time. Last time I checked in 2017. And what that means is
0:00:58 many of the principles, many of the philosophies, many of the templates still work. There are certain
0:01:04 tech tools and so on, of course, that have changed over time. Those things change nonstop. The rate
0:01:10 of improvement, Moore’s Law, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All those things have changed, but there are
0:01:17 certain through lines and tactics and strategies that still work. So readers and listeners alike often ask
0:01:22 me, what would you change? What would you update? But an equally interesting question is what wouldn’t
0:01:27 I change? What would I keep? What stands the test of time? What has already stood the test of time for
0:01:34 nearly 20 years and hasn’t lost any potency whatsoever? So I’m going to share two chapters from
0:01:42 the audiobook this week that highlight a lot that you can still use. These chapters push you to defend
0:01:48 your scarcest resource attention as opposed to just time. One by saying no to people, the other by saying
0:01:55 no to excess information, which has never had more relevance than today. So there’s a lot in here that
0:02:00 you can copy and paste. They feature some of my favorite tools and frameworks, including polite but firm
0:02:07 word-for-word scripts that I still use to this day. As I already mentioned with the tech, some examples may feel
0:02:14 dated. A handful might seem prehistoric, but just ignore those or treat them as historic artifacts.
0:02:22 Archaeological dig into 2007, 2009. There’s plenty that you can still borrow that’s effective and feel
0:02:28 free to remix the rest with modern tools of your choosing, of course. The chapters are narrated by the
0:02:33 great voice actor Ray Porter. If you are interested in checking out the rest of the audiobook, which is
0:02:38 produced and copyrighted by Blackstone Publishing, you can find it on Audible, Apple, Google, Spotify,
0:02:44 Downpour.com, or wherever you find your favorite audiobooks. We’re going to get right to it, but first,
0:02:50 just a few words from the people who make this podcast possible. In the last handful of years, I’ve become
0:02:58 very interested in environmental toxins, avoiding microplastics, and many other commonly found compounds
0:03:04 all over the place. One place I looked is in the kitchen. Many people don’t realize just how toxic
0:03:10 their cookware is or can be. A lot of nonstick pans, practically all of them, can release harmful
0:03:16 forever chemicals, PFAS, in other words, spelled P-F-A-S, into your food, your home, and then ultimately
0:03:22 that ends up in your body. Teflon is a prime example of this. It is still the forever chemical that most
0:03:29 companies are using. So our place reached out to me as a potential sponsor, and the first thing I did
0:03:36 was look at the reviews of their products and said, send me one, and that is the Titanium Always Pan
0:03:42 Pro. And the claim is that it’s the first nonstick pan with zero coating. So that means zero forever
0:03:48 chemicals and durability that’ll last forever. I was very skeptical. I was very busy. So I said,
0:03:52 you know what? I want to test this thing quickly. It’s supposed to be nonstick. It’s supposed to be
0:03:56 durable. I’m going to test it with two things. I’m going to test it with scrambled eggs in the morning
0:04:03 because eggs are always a disaster in anything that isn’t nonstick with the toxic coating. And then I’m
0:04:09 going to test it with a steak sear because I want to see how much it retains heat. And it worked
0:04:18 perfectly in both cases, and I was frankly astonished how well it worked. The Titanium Always Pan Pro,
0:04:22 has become my go-to pan in the kitchen. It replaces a lot of other things for searing,
0:04:29 for eggs, for anything you can imagine. And the design is really clever. It does combine the best
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0:05:08 I am always on the hunt for protein sources that don’t require sacrifices in taste or nutrition. I
0:05:13 don’t want to eat sawdust. I also don’t want a candy bar that’s disguised as a protein bar.
0:05:19 And that’s why I love the protein bars from today’s sponsor, David. They are my go-to protein source
0:05:24 on the run. I throw them in my bag whenever I am in doubt that I might be able to get a good source
0:05:29 protein. And with David protein bars, you get the fewest calories for the most protein ever. David
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0:05:47 and he really does his due diligence on everything. And on top of that, David tastes great. Their bars
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0:05:58 those from running out the door if I think I might end up in a situation where I can’t get sufficient
0:06:03 protein. And why is that important? Well, adequate protein intake is critical for building and preserving
0:06:10 muscle mass, especially as we age. And one of the biggest things that you want to pay attention to
0:06:15 is counteracting sarcopenia, age-related muscle loss. And for that, you need enough protein. When in
0:06:21 doubt, up your protein. Protein is also the most satiating macronutrient. What does that mean? It means
0:06:27 that protein out of carbohydrates, fat, and protein inhibits your appetite while also feeding all the
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0:07:05 Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
0:07:09 Can I ask you a personal question? Now would it seem an appropriate time?
0:07:14 What if I did the opposite? I’m a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton.
0:07:31 6. The Low Information Diet. Cultivating Selective Ignorance.
0:07:39 What information consumes is rather obvious. It consumes the attention of its recipients.
0:07:46 Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention
0:07:52 efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
0:07:58 Herbert Simon, recipient of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and the A.M. Turing Award,
0:08:07 the Nobel Prize of Computer Science. Simon received the Nobel Prize in 1978 for his contribution to
0:08:13 organizational decision-making. It is impossible to have perfect and complete information at any
0:08:21 given time to make a decision. Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its
0:08:28 creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits
0:08:36 of thinking. Albert Einstein. I hope you’re sitting down. Take that sandwich out of your mouth so you
0:08:42 don’t choke. Cover the baby’s ears. I’m going to tell you something that upsets a lot of people.
0:08:51 I never watch the news and have bought one single newspaper in the last five years in Stansted Airport
0:08:58 in London and only because it gave me a discount on a Diet Pepsi. I would claim to be Amish, but last time
0:09:07 I checked, Pepsi wasn’t on the menu. How obscene! I call myself an informed and responsible citizen?
0:09:13 How do I stay up to date with current affairs? I’ll answer all of that, but wait, it gets better.
0:09:20 I usually check business email for about an hour each Monday, and I never check voicemail when abroad.
0:09:22 Never. Ever.
0:09:26 But what if someone has an emergency? It doesn’t happen.
0:09:33 My contacts now know that I don’t respond to emergencies, so the emergencies somehow don’t exist
0:09:39 or don’t come to me. Problems, as a rule, solve themselves or disappear
0:09:44 if you remove yourself as an information bottleneck and empower others.
0:09:48 Cultivating Selective Ignorance
0:09:53 There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.
0:09:57 Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
0:10:04 From this point forward, I’m going to propose that you develop an uncanny ability
0:10:10 to be selectively ignorant. Ignorance may be bliss, but it is also practical.
0:10:17 It is imperative that you learn to ignore or redirect all information and interruptions
0:10:24 that are irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable. Most are all three.
0:10:29 The first step is to develop and maintain a low-information diet.
0:10:36 Just as modern man consumes both too many calories and calories of no nutritional value,
0:10:41 information workers eat data both in excess and from the wrong sources.
0:10:46 Lifestyle design is based on massive action output.
0:10:54 Increased output necessitates decreased input. Most information is time-consuming, negative,
0:11:00 irrelevant to your goals, and outside of your influence. I challenge you to look at whatever
0:11:05 you read or watched today and tell me that it wasn’t at least two of the four.
0:11:11 I read the front-page headlines through the newspaper machines as I walk to lunch each day and nothing
0:11:17 more. In five years, I haven’t had a single problem due to this selective ignorance. It gives you
0:11:23 something new to ask the rest of the population in lieu of small talk. Tell me what’s new in the world.
0:11:30 And if it’s that important, you’ll hear people talking about it. Using my crib notes approach to world
0:11:37 affairs, I also retain more than someone who loses the forest for the trees in a sea of extraneous details.
0:11:45 From an actionable information standpoint, I consume a maximum of one-third of one industry magazine,
0:11:54 response magazine, and one business magazine, ink, per month, for a grand total of approximately four hours.
0:12:00 That’s it for results-oriented reading. I read an hour of fiction prior to bed for relaxation.
0:12:08 How on earth do I act responsibly? Let me give an example of how I and other NR both consider and
0:12:16 obtain information. I voted in the last presidential election, 2004 at the time this was written,
0:12:23 despite having been in Berlin. I made my decision in a matter of hours. First, I sent emails to educated
0:12:28 friends in the U.S. who share my values and asked them who they were voting for and why.
0:12:35 Second, I judge people based on actions and not words. Thus, I asked friends in Berlin,
0:12:41 who had more perspective outside of U.S. media propaganda, how they judged the candidates based
0:12:48 on their historical behavior. Last, I watched the presidential debates. That was it. I let other
0:12:55 dependable people synthesize hundreds of hours and thousands of pages of media for me. It was like
0:13:00 having dozens of personal information assistants, and I didn’t have to pay them a single cent.
0:13:06 That’s a simple example, you say. But what if you needed to learn to do something your friends haven’t
0:13:13 done, like, say, sell a book to the world’s largest publisher as a first-time author? Funny you should
0:13:21 ask. There are two approaches I used. One, I picked one book out of dozens based on reader reviews and the
0:13:27 fact that the authors had actually done what I wanted to do. If the task is how-to in nature,
0:13:34 I only read accounts that are how I did it and autobiographical. No speculators or wannabes are
0:13:41 worth the time. Two, using the book to generate intelligent and specific questions, I contacted
0:13:48 10 of the top authors and agents in the world via email and phone, with a response rate of 80%.
0:13:56 I only read the sections of the book that were relevant to immediate next steps, which took less
0:14:03 than two hours. To develop a template email and call script took approximately four hours, and the actual
0:14:09 emails and phone calls took less than an hour. This personal contact approach is not only more effective
0:14:15 and more efficient than all-you-can-eat info buffets, it also provided me with the major league
0:14:23 alliances and mentors necessary to sell this book. Rediscover the power of the forgotten skill called
0:14:30 talking. It works. Once again, less is more.
0:14:43 How to read 200% faster in 10 minutes. There will be times when, it’s true, you will have to read. Here are four
0:14:49 simple tips that will lessen the damage and increase your speed at least 200% in 10 minutes with no
0:14:50 comprehension loss.
0:14:59 1. Two minutes. Use a pen or finger to trace under each line as you read as fast as possible.
0:15:07 Reading is a series of jumping snapshots called saccades, and using a visual guide prevents regression.
0:15:16 2. Three minutes. Begin each line focusing on the third word in from the first word and end each line
0:15:23 focusing on the third word in from the last word. This makes use of peripheral vision that is otherwise
0:15:29 wasted on margins. For example, even when the highlighted words in the next line are your
0:15:35 beginning and ending focal points, the entire sentence is red, just with less eye movement.
0:15:39 Once upon a time, an information addict decided to detox.
0:15:44 Move in from both sides further and further as it gets easier.
0:15:50 3. Two minutes. Once comfortable indenting three or four words from both sides,
0:15:58 attempt to take only two snapshots, also known as fixations, per line on the first and last indented
0:16:06 words. 4. Three minutes. Practice reading too fast for comprehension but with good technique,
0:16:10 the above three techniques, for five pages prior to reading at a comfortable speed.
0:16:17 This will heighten perception and reset your speed limit, much like how 50 miles per hour
0:16:23 normally feels fast but seems like slow motion if you drop down from 70 miles per hour on the freeway.
0:16:30 To calculate reading speed in words per minute, WPM, and thus progress in a given book,
0:16:39 add up the number of words in 10 lines and divide by 10 to get the average words per line. Multiply this
0:16:46 by the number of lines per page and you have the average words per page. Now it’s simple. If you
0:16:56 initially read 1.25 pages in one minute at 330 average words per page, that’s 412.5 words per minute.
0:17:06 If you then read 3.5 pages after training, it’s 1,155 words per minute and you’re in the top 1% of the
0:17:17 world’s fastest readers. Q&A. Questions and actions. Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to
0:17:32 go on an immediate one-week media fast. The world doesn’t even hiccup, much less end when you cut the
0:17:38 information umbilical cord. To realize this, it’s best to use the band-aid approach and do it quickly.
0:17:46 A one-week media fast. Information is too much like ice cream to do otherwise. “Oh, I’ll just
0:17:53 have half a spoonful” is about as realistic as “I just want to jump online for a minute.” Go cold turkey.
0:18:01 If you want to go back to the 15,000 calorie potato chip information diet afterward, fine. But beginning
0:18:09 tomorrow and for at least five full days, here are the rules: No newspapers, magazines, audio books,
0:18:18 except for this audio book, or non-music radio. Music is permitted at all times. No news websites
0:18:29 whatsoever. CNN.com, DrudgeReport.com, MSN.com, LOL, etc. No television at all, except for one hour of
0:18:37 pleasure viewing each evening. No reading books, except for this book, and one hour of fiction pleasure
0:18:44 reading prior to bed. As someone who read exclusively non-fiction for nearly 15 years, I can tell you two
0:18:51 things. It’s not productive to read two fact-based books at the same time. This is one. And fiction
0:18:58 is better than sleeping pills for putting the happenings of the day behind you. No web surfing
0:19:05 at the desk unless it is necessary to complete a work task for that day. Necessary means necessary,
0:19:13 not nice to have. Unnecessary reading is public enemy number one during this one-week fast.
0:19:19 What do you do with all the extra time? Replace the newspaper at breakfast with speaking to your
0:19:26 spouse, bonding with your children, or learning the principles in this audio book. Between nine
0:19:32 to five, complete your top priorities as per the last chapter. If you complete them with time to spare,
0:19:39 do the exercises in this audio book. Recommending this audio book might seem hypocritical,
0:19:45 but it’s not. The information in this audio book is both important and to be applied now,
0:19:52 not tomorrow or the day after. Each day at lunch break, and no earlier, get your five-minute news
0:19:57 fix. Ask a well-informed colleague or a restaurant waiter, “Anything important happening in the world
0:20:03 today? I couldn’t get the paper today.” Stop this as soon as you realize that the answer doesn’t affect your
0:20:09 actions at all. Most people won’t even remember what they spent one to two hours absorbing that morning.
0:20:14 Be strict with yourself. I can prescribe the medicine, but you need to take it.
0:20:23 Download the Firefox web browser, firefox.com, and use LeechBlock to block certain sites entirely for set
0:20:37 periods. From their site, www.progonosco.com/leechblock.html. You can specify up to six sets of sites to block,
0:20:42 with different times and days for each set. You can block sites within fixed time periods,
0:20:51 e.g. between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., after a time limit, e.g. 10 minutes in every hour, or with a combination
0:20:59 of time periods and time limit, e.g. 10 minutes in every hour between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. You can also set
0:21:04 a password for access to the extension options, just to slow you down in moments of weakness.
0:21:12 2. Develop the habit of asking yourself, “Will I definitely use this information for something
0:21:19 immediate and important?” It’s not enough to use information for something. It needs to be immediate
0:21:27 and important. If no on either count, don’t consume it. Information is useless if it is not applied to
0:21:33 something important, or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it. I used to have the
0:21:40 habit of reading a book or site to prepare for an event weeks or months in the future, and I would then
0:21:47 need to re-read the same material when the deadline for action was closer. This is stupid and redundant.
0:21:55 Follow your to-do shortlist and fill in the information gaps as you go. Focus on what Digerati
0:22:01 Cathy Sierra calls “just-in-time” information instead of “just-in-case” information.
0:22:11 3. Practice the art of non-finishing. This is another one that took me a long time to learn.
0:22:18 Starting something doesn’t automatically justify finishing it. If you are reading an article that
0:22:25 sucks, put it down and don’t pick it back up. If you go to a movie and it’s worse than Matrix 3,
0:22:31 get the hell out of there before more neurons die. And if you’re full, after half a plate of ribs,
0:22:38 put the damn fork down and don’t order dessert. More is not better, and stopping something is often ten
0:22:45 times better than finishing it. Develop the habit of non-finishing that which is boring or unproductive,
0:22:50 if a boss isn’t demanding it. Comfort Challenge
0:22:59 Get phone numbers. Two days. Being sure to maintain eye contact. Ask for the phone numbers of at least
0:23:05 two, the more you attempt, the less stressful it will be, attractive members of the opposite sex
0:23:12 on each day. Girls, this means you’re in the game as well, and it doesn’t matter if you’re 50 plus.
0:23:18 Remember that the real goal is not to get numbers, but to get over the fear of asking,
0:23:24 so the outcome is unimportant. If you’re in a relationship, sign up to or pretend to gather
0:23:31 information for Greenpeace. Just toss the numbers if you get them. Go to a mall if you want to get
0:23:37 some rapid-fire practice, my preference for getting over the discomfort quickly, and aim to ask three
0:23:42 people in a row within five minutes. Feel free to use some variation of the following script.
0:23:46 Excuse me. I know this is going to sound strange, but if I don’t ask you now,
0:23:53 I’ll be kicking myself for the rest of the day. I’m running to meet a friend, i.e. I have friends,
0:24:00 and I’m not a stalker. But I think you’re really extremely drop-dead, cute, gorgeous, hot. Could I
0:24:05 have your phone number? I’m not a psycho, I promise. You can give me a fake one if you’re not interested.
0:24:13 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we’ll be right back to the show.
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0:25:19 7. Interrupting Interruption and the Art of Refusal
0:25:27 Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. Ralph Shirell
0:25:35 Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations
0:25:42 habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate. Dave Berry, Pulitzer Prize-winning
0:25:51 American humorist. Spring 2000, Princeton, New Jersey. 1:35 p.m.
0:26:01 I think I understand. Moving on. In the next paragraph, it explains that I had detailed notes and didn’t
0:26:11 want to miss a single point. 3:45 p.m. OK, that makes sense. But if we look at the following example…
0:26:18 I paused for a moment, mid-sentence. The teaching assistant had both hands on his face.
0:26:27 Tim, let’s end here for now. I’ll be sure to keep these points in mind. He had had enough. Me too.
0:26:35 But I knew I’d only have to do it once. For all four years of school, I had a policy. If I received
0:26:42 anything less than an A on the first paper or non-multiple-choice test in a given class, I would
0:26:48 bring two to three hours of questions to the graders’ office hours and not leave until the other had answered
0:26:57 them all or stopped out of exhaustion. This served two important purposes. One, I learned exactly how
0:27:04 the grader evaluated work, including his or her prejudices and pet peeves. Two, the grader would
0:27:11 think long and hard about ever giving me less than an A. He or she would never consider giving me a bad
0:27:18 grade without exceptional reasons for doing so, as he or she knew I’d come a-knocking for another three-hour
0:27:25 visit. Learn to be difficult when it counts. In school, as in life, having a reputation for
0:27:31 being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it
0:27:38 every time. Think back to your days on the playground. There was always a big bully and countless victims,
0:27:45 But there was also that one small kid who fought like hell, thrashing and swinging for the fences. He or she
0:27:52 might not have won, but after one or two exhausting exchanges, the bully chose not to bother him or her.
0:28:00 It was easier to find someone else. Be that kid. Doing the important and ignoring the trivial is hard,
0:28:08 Because so much of the world seems to conspire to force crap upon you. Fortunately, a few simple routine changes
0:28:15 make bothering you much more painful than leaving you in peace. It’s time to stop taking information abuse.
0:28:20 Not all evils are created equal.
0:28:27 For our purposes, an interruption is anything that prevents the start to finish completion of a critical task,
0:28:29 and there are three principal offenders:
0:28:34 1. Time wasters – those things that can be ignored with little or no consequence.
0:28:42 Common time wasters include meetings, discussions, phone calls, web, surfing, and email that are unimportant.
0:28:52 2. Time consumers – repetitive tasks or requests that need to be completed, but often interrupt high-level work.
0:28:59 Here are a few you might know intimately: reading and responding to email, making and returning
0:29:07 phone calls, customer service, order status, product assistance, etc., financial or sales reporting,
0:29:12 personal errands – all necessary repeated actions and tasks.
0:29:20 3. Empowerment failures – instances where someone needs approval to make something small happen.
0:29:24 Here are just a few: fixing customer problems, lost shipments,
0:29:31 damaged shipments, malfunctions, etc., customer contact, cash expenditures of all types.
0:29:35 Let’s look at the prescriptions for all three in turn.
0:29:43 1. Time wasters – become an ignoramus – the best defense is a good offense.
0:29:49 2. Dan Gable, Olympic gold medalist in wrestling and the most successful coach in history.
0:29:58 2. Personal record: 299 wins, 6 losses, 3 draws, with 182 pins.
0:30:02 2. Time wasters are the easiest to eliminate and deflect.
0:30:08 2. It is a matter of limiting access and funneling all communication toward immediate action.
0:30:16 1. Limit email consumption and production. This is the greatest single interruption in the modern world.
0:30:24 1. Turn off the audible alert if you have one on Outlook or a similar program and turn off automatic
0:30:29 3. Send/Receive, which delivers email to your inbox as soon as someone sends them.
0:30:37 2. Check email twice per day, once at 12 noon or just prior to lunch and again at 4 o’clock pm.
0:30:46 12 o’clock pm and 4 o’clock pm are times that ensure you will have the most responses from previously sent email.
0:30:54 Never check email first thing in the morning. This habit alone can change your life. It seems small, but has an enormous effect.
0:31:03 Instead, complete your most important task before 11 o’clock am to avoid using lunch or reading email as a postponement excuse.
0:31:11 Before implementing the twice-daily routine, you must create an email auto-response that will train your boss,
0:31:19 co-workers, suppliers and clients to be more effective. I would recommend that you do not ask to implement this.
0:31:24 Remember one of our Ten Commandments. Beg for forgiveness. Don’t ask for permission.
0:31:33 If this gives you heart palpitations, speak with your immediate supervisor and propose to trial the approach for 1 to 3 days.
0:31:43 Sight pending projects and frustration with constant interruptions as the reason. Feel free to blame it on spam or someone outside of the office.
0:31:46 Here is a simple email template that can be used.
0:32:01 Greetings, friends or esteemed colleagues. Due to high workload, I am currently checking and responding to email twice daily at 12 o’clock pm Eastern Time, or your time zone, and 4 o’clock pm Eastern Time.
0:32:15 If you require urgent assistance, please ensure it’s urgent, that cannot wait until either 12 o’clock pm or 4 o’clock pm, please contact me via phone at 555-555-5555.
0:32:25 Thank you for understanding this move to more efficiency and effectiveness. It helps me accomplish more to serve you better. Sincerely, Tim Ferriss.
0:32:37 Move to once per day as quickly as possible. Emergencies are seldom that. People are poor judges of importance and inflate minutiae to fill time and feel important.
0:32:50 This auto-response is a tool that, far from decreasing collective effectiveness, forces people to re-evaluate their reason for interrupting you and helps them decrease meaningless and time-consuming contact.
0:32:58 I was initially terrified of missing important requests and inviting disaster, just as you might be upon reading this recommendation.
0:33:04 Nothing happened. Give it a shot and work out the small bumps as you progress.
0:33:10 The second step is to screen incoming and limit outgoing phone calls.
0:33:18 1. Use two telephone numbers if possible. One office line, non-urgent, and one cellular. Urgent.
0:33:28 This could also be two cell phones, or the non-urgent line could be an internet phone number that routes calls to online voicemail, skype.com, for example.
0:33:38 Use the cell number in the email auto-response and answer it at all times, unless it is an unknown caller or it is a call you don’t want to answer.
0:33:45 If in doubt, allow the call to go to voicemail and listen to the voicemail immediately afterward to gauge importance.
0:33:52 If it can wait, let it wait. The offending parties have to learn to wait.
0:33:58 The office phone should be put on silent mode and allowed to go to voicemail at all times.
0:34:00 The voicemail recording should sound familiar.
0:34:02 You’ve reached the desk of Tim Ferriss.
0:34:11 I am currently checking and responding to voicemail twice daily at 12:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, or your time zone, and 4:00 PM Eastern Time.
0:34:24 If you require assistance with a truly urgent matter that cannot wait until either 12:00 PM or 4:00 PM, please contact me on my cell at 555-555-5555.
0:34:29 Otherwise, please leave a message, and I will return it at the next of those two times.
0:34:34 Be sure to leave your email address, as I am often able to respond faster that way.
0:34:39 Thank you for understanding this move to more efficiency and effectiveness.
0:34:42 It helps me accomplish more to serve you better.
0:34:44 Have a wonderful day.
0:34:46 2.
0:34:52 If someone does call your cell phone, it is presumably urgent and should be treated as such.
0:34:54 Do not allow them to consume time otherwise.
0:34:56 It’s all in the greeting.
0:34:57 Compare the following:
0:34:59 Jane, Receiver.
0:35:00 Hello?
0:35:02 John, Caller.
0:35:03 Hi.
0:35:05 Is this Jane?
0:35:06 Jane.
0:35:07 This is Jane.
0:35:08 John.
0:35:09 Hi, Jane.
0:35:10 It’s John.
0:35:11 Jane.
0:35:12 Oh, hi, John.
0:35:13 How are you?
0:35:14 Or, oh, hi, John.
0:35:16 What’s going on?
0:35:21 John will now digress and lead you into a conversation about nothing, from which you will
0:35:25 have to recover and then fish out the ultimate purpose of the call.
0:35:27 There is a better approach.
0:35:28 Jane.
0:35:29 This is Jane speaking.
0:35:30 John.
0:35:31 Hi, it’s John.
0:35:32 Jane.
0:35:33 Hi, John.
0:35:34 I’m right in the middle of something.
0:35:35 How can I help you out?
0:35:37 Potential continuation.
0:35:38 John.
0:35:39 Oh, I can call back.
0:35:40 Jane.
0:35:41 No, I have a minute.
0:35:42 What can I do for you?
0:35:46 Don’t encourage people to chit-chat and don’t let them chit-chat.
0:35:48 Get them to the point immediately.
0:35:53 If they meander or try to postpone for a later, undefined call, reel them in and get them
0:35:54 to come to the point.
0:35:59 If they go into a long description of a problem cut in with, name, sorry to interrupt, but I
0:36:01 have a call in five minutes.
0:36:02 What can I do to help you out?
0:36:07 You might instead say, name, sorry to interrupt, but I have a call in five minutes.
0:36:09 Can you send me an email?
0:36:14 The third step is to master the art of refusal and avoiding meetings.
0:36:22 The first day our new sales VP arrived at TruSan in 2001, he came into the all-company meeting
0:36:25 and made an announcement in just about this many words.
0:36:27 I am not here to make friends.
0:36:32 I have been hired to build a sales team and sell product, and that’s what I intend to do.
0:36:33 Thanks.
0:36:36 So much for small talk.
0:36:39 He proceeded to deliver on his promise.
0:36:44 The office socializers disliked him for his no-nonsense approach to communication, but
0:36:46 everyone respected his time.
0:36:51 He wasn’t rude without reason, but he was direct and kept the people around him focused.
0:36:58 Some didn’t consider him charismatic, but no one considered him anything less than spectacularly
0:36:59 effective.
0:37:04 I remember sitting down in his office for our first one-on-one meeting.
0:37:10 Fresh off four years of rigorous academic training, I immediately jumped into explaining the prospect
0:37:16 profiles, elaborate planning I’d developed, responses to date, and so forth and so on.
0:37:21 I had spent at least two hours preparing to make this first impression a good one.
0:37:26 He listened with a smile on his face for no more than two minutes and then held up a hand.
0:37:27 I stopped.
0:37:31 He laughed in a kind-hearted manner and said, “Tim, I don’t want the story.
0:37:34 Just tell me what we need to do.”
0:37:40 Over the following weeks, he trained me to recognize when I was unfocused or focused on the wrong things, which
0:37:46 meant anything that didn’t move the top two or three clients one step closer to signing a purchase order.
0:37:49 Our meetings were now no more than five minutes long.
0:38:01 From this moment forward, resolve to keep those around you focused and avoid all meetings, whether in person or remote, that do not have clear objectives.
0:38:10 It is possible to do this tactfully, but expect that some time wasters will be offended the first few times their advances are rejected.
0:38:18 Once it is clear that remaining on task is your policy and not subject to change, they will accept it and move on with life.
0:38:19 Hard feelings pass.
0:38:22 Don’t suffer fools or you’ll become one.
0:38:28 It is your job to train those around you to be effective and efficient.
0:38:30 No one else will do it for you.
0:38:33 Here are a few recommendations:
0:38:34 1.
0:38:44 Decide that, given the non-urgent nature of most issues, you will steer people toward the following means of communication, in order of preference:
0:38:47 Email, phone, and in-person meetings.
0:38:54 If someone proposes a meeting, request an email instead and then use the phone as your fallback offer if need be.
0:38:58 Cite other immediately pending work tasks as the reason.
0:38:59 2.
0:39:03 Respond to voicemail via email whenever possible.
0:39:05 This trains people to be concise.
0:39:08 Help them develop the habit.
0:39:15 Similar to our opening greeting on the phone, email communication should be streamlined to prevent needless back and forth.
0:39:23 Thus, an email with “Can you meet at 4:00 PM?” would become “Can you meet at 4:00 PM? If so?”
0:39:27 If not, please advise three other times that work for you.
0:39:34 This “if/then” structure becomes more important as you check email less often.
0:39:44 Since I only check email once a week, it is critical that no one needs a “what if” answered or other information within seven days of a given email I send.
0:39:54 If I suspect that a manufacturing order hasn’t arrived at the shipping facility, for example, I’ll send an email to my shipping facility manager along these lines.
0:40:00 “Dear Susan, has the new manufacturing shipment arrived? If so, please advise me on…”
0:40:09 If not, please contact John Doe at 555-5555 or via email at john@doe.com.
0:40:13 He is also CC’d, and advise on delivery date and tracking.
0:40:25 John, if there are any issues with the shipment, please coordinate with Susan, reachable at 555-4444, who has the authority to make decisions up to $500 on my behalf.
0:40:32 “In case of emergency, call me on my cell phone, but I trust you to. Thanks.”
0:40:40 This prevents most follow-up questions, avoids two separate dialogues, and takes me out of the problem-solving equation.
0:40:48 “Get into the habit of considering what ‘if/then’ actions can be proposed in any email where you ask a question.”
0:40:57 “Three. Meetings should only be held to make decisions about a predefined situation, not to define the problem.
0:41:07 If someone proposes that you meet with them, or set a time to talk on the phone, ask that person to send you an email with an agenda to define the purpose.”
0:41:16 “That sounds doable. So I can best prepare, can you please send me an email with an agenda, that is, the topics and questions we’ll need to address?
0:41:19 That would be great. Thanks in advance.”
0:41:26 “Don’t give them a chance to bail out. The ‘thanks in advance’ before a retort increases your chances of getting the email.”
0:41:39 “The email medium forces people to define the desired outcome of a meeting or call. Nine times out of ten, a meeting is unnecessary and you can answer the questions, once defined, via email.”
0:41:52 “Impose this habit on others. I haven’t had an in-person meeting for my business in more than five years, and have had fewer than a dozen conference calls, all lasting less than 30 minutes.”
0:42:03 4. Speaking of 30 minutes, if you absolutely cannot stop a meeting or call from happening, define the end time.
0:42:12 Do not leave these discussions open-ended and keep them short. If things are well defined, decisions should not take more than 30 minutes.
0:42:26 Cite other commitments at odd times to make them more believable, e.g. 320 vs. 330, and force people to focus instead of socializing, commiserating, and digressing.
0:42:39 If you must join a meeting that is scheduled to last a long time, or that is open-ended, inform the organizer that you would like permission to cover your portion first, as you have a commitment in 15 minutes.
0:42:45 If you have to, feign an urgent phone call. Get the hell out of there and have someone else update you later.”
0:42:59 The other option is to be completely transparent and voice your opinion of how unnecessary the meeting is. If you choose this route, be prepared to face fire and offer alternatives.
0:43:05 5. The cubicle is your temple. Don’t permit casual visitors.
0:43:13 Some suggest using a clear “do not disturb” sign of some type, but I have found that this is ignored unless you have an office.
0:43:18 My approach was to put headphones on, even if I wasn’t listening to anything.
0:43:23 If someone approached me, despite this discouragement, I would pretend to be on the phone.
0:43:29 I’d put a finger to my lips, say something like, “I hear you,” and then say into the mic, “Can you hold on a second?”
0:43:33 Next, I’d turn to the invader and say, “Hi, what can I do for you?”
0:43:42 I wouldn’t let them “get back to me,” but rather force the person to give me a five-second summary and then send me an email if necessary.
0:43:49 If headphone games aren’t your thing, the reflexive response to an invader should be the same as when answering the cell phone.
0:43:53 “Hi, invader. I’m right in the middle of something. How can I be of help?”
0:44:01 If it’s not clear within 30 seconds, ask the person to send you an email about the chosen issue. Do not offer to send them an email first.
0:44:07 I’ll be happy to help, but I have to finish this first. Can you send me a quick email to remind me?
0:44:16 If you still cannot deflect an invader, give the person a time limit on your availability, which can also be used for phone conversations.
0:44:22 Okay, I only have two minutes before a call, but what’s the situation and what can I do to help?
0:44:30 6. Use the puppy dog clothes to help your superiors and others develop the no-meeting habit.
0:44:36 The puppy dog clothes in sales is so named because it is based on the pet store sales approach.
0:44:46 If someone likes a puppy but is hesitant to make the life-altering purchase, just offer to let them take the pup home and bring it back if they change their minds.
0:44:50 Of course, the return seldom happens.
0:44:56 The puppy dog clothes is invaluable whenever you face resistance to permanent changes.
0:45:01 Get your foot in the door with a “let’s just try it once” reversible trial.
0:45:03 Compare the following:
0:45:05 “I think you’d love this puppy.
0:45:10 It will forever add to your responsibilities until he dies ten years from now.
0:45:16 No more carefree vacations, and you’ll finally get to pick up poop all over the city.
0:45:17 What do you think?”
0:45:18 Versus,
0:45:20 “I think you’d love this puppy.
0:45:22 Why don’t you just take him home and see what you think?
0:45:25 You can just bring him back if you change your mind.”
0:45:30 Now, imagine walking up to your boss in the hallway and clapping a hand on her shoulder.
0:45:33 “I’d like to go to the meeting, but I have a better idea.
0:45:39 Let’s never have another one since all we do is waste time and not decide anything useful.”
0:45:40 Versus,
0:45:45 “I’d really like to go to the meeting, but I’m totally overwhelmed and really need to get a few important things done.
0:45:48 Can I sit out just for today?
0:45:50 I’d be distracted in the meeting otherwise.
0:45:55 I promise I’ll catch up afterward by reviewing the meeting with colleague X.
0:45:56 Is that okay?”
0:46:01 The second set of alternatives seem less permanent, and they’re intended to appear so.
0:46:08 Repeat this routine and ensure that you achieve more outside of the meeting than the attendees do within it.
0:46:17 Repeat the disappearing act as often as possible and cite improved productivity to convert this slowly into a permanent routine change.
0:46:21 “Learn to imitate any good child.
0:46:23 Just this once.
0:46:24 Please.
0:46:26 I promise I’ll do X.”
0:46:30 Parents fall for it because kids help adults to fool themselves.
0:46:35 It works with bosses, suppliers, customers, and the rest of the world, too.
0:46:38 Use it, but don’t fall for it.
0:46:45 If a boss asks for overtime just this once, he or she will expect it in the future.
0:46:49 Time consumers.
0:46:52 Batch and do not falter.
0:46:56 A schedule defends from chaos and whim.
0:47:01 Annie Dillard, winner of Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, 1975.
0:47:09 If you have never used a commercial printer before, the pricing and lead times could surprise you.
0:47:18 Let’s assume it costs $310 and takes one week to print 20 customized t-shirts with four color logos.
0:47:23 How much and how long does it take to print three of the same t-shirt?
0:47:25 $110 in one week.
0:47:27 How is that possible?
0:47:29 Simple.
0:47:30 The setup charges don’t change.
0:47:40 It costs the printer the same amount in materials for plate preparation, $150, and the same in labor to man the press itself, $100.
0:47:51 The setup is the real-time consumer, and thus the job, despite its small size, needs to be scheduled just like the other, resulting in the same one-week delivery date.
0:47:54 The lower economy of scale picks up the rest.
0:48:03 The cost for three shirts is $20 per shirt times three shirts instead of $3 per shirt times 20 shirts.
0:48:11 The cost and time-effective solution, therefore, is to wait until you have a larger order, an approach called batching.
0:48:21 Batching is also the solution to our distracting but necessary time consumers, those repetitive tasks that interrupt the most important.
0:48:31 If you check mail and make bill payments five times a week, it might take 30 minutes per instance and you respond to a total of 20 letters in two and a half hours.
0:48:39 If you do this once per week instead, it might take 60 minutes total and you still respond to a total of 20 letters.
0:48:42 People do the former out of fear of emergencies.
0:48:46 First, there are seldom real emergencies.
0:48:55 Second, of the urgent communication you will receive, missing a deadline is usually reversible and otherwise costs a minimum to correct.
0:49:02 There is an inescapable set-up time for all tasks, large or minuscule in scale.
0:49:06 It is often the same for one as it is for a hundred.
0:49:14 There is a psychological switching of gears that can require up to 45 minutes to resume a major task that has been interrupted.
0:49:21 More than a quarter of each 9 to 5 period, 28%, is consumed by such interruptions.
0:49:25 Jonathan B. Spira and Joshua B. Feintuch
0:49:33 The Cost of Not Paying Attention: How Interruptions Impact Knowledge Worker Productivity
0:49:46 This is true of all recurring tasks and is precisely why we have already decided to check email and phone calls twice per day at specific predetermined times, between which we let them accumulate.
0:49:55 From mid-2004 to 2007, I checked mail no more than once a week, often not for up to four weeks at a time.
0:50:00 Nothing was irreparable, and nothing cost more than $300 to fix.
0:50:04 This batching has saved me hundreds of hours of redundant work.
0:50:06 How much is your time worth?
0:50:09 Let’s use a hypothetical example.
0:50:15 1. $20 per hour is how much you are paid or value your time.
0:50:22 This would be the case, for example, if you are paid $40,000 per year and get two weeks of vacation per year.
0:50:30 $40,000 divided by 40 hours per week times 50 equals $2,000 equals $20 per hour.
0:50:44 Estimate your hourly income by cutting the last three zeros off of your annual income and halving the remaining number, e.g., $50,000 a year becomes $25 an hour.
0:50:59 2. Estimate the amount of time you will save by grouping similar tasks together and batching them, and calculate how much you have earned by multiplying this hour number by your per-hour rate, $20 here.
0:51:03 One time per week, 10 hours equals $200.
0:51:08 One time per two weeks, 20 hours equals $400.
0:51:13 One time per month, 40 hours equals $800.
0:51:21 3. Test each of the above batching frequencies and determine how much problems cost to fix in each period.
0:51:26 If the cost is less than the above dollar amounts, batch even further apart.
0:51:53 For example, using our above math, if I check email once per week and that results in an average loss of two sales per week, totaling $80 in lost profit, I will continue checking once per week because $200, 10 hours of time, minus $80 is still a $120 net gain, not to mention the enormous benefits of completing other main tasks in those 10 hours.
0:52:07 If you calculate the financial and emotional benefits of completing just one main tasks, such as landing a major client or completing a life-changing trip, the value of batching is much more than the per-hour savings.
0:52:15 If the problems cost more than hours saved, scale back to the next less frequent batch schedule.
0:52:25 In this case, I would drop from once per week to twice per week, not daily, and attempt to fix the system so that I can return to once per week.
0:52:29 Do not work harder when the solution is working smarter.
0:52:37 I have batched both personal and business tasks further and further apart as I’ve realized just how few real problems come up.
0:53:01 Some of my scheduled batches in 2007 were email, Mondays 10:00 AM, phone completely eliminated, laundry every other Sunday at 10:00 PM, credit cards and bills, most are on automatic payment, but I check balances every second Monday after email, strength training every fourth day for 30 minutes, etc.
0:53:15 The vision is really about empowering workers, giving them all the information about what’s going on so they can do a lot more than they’ve done in the past.
0:53:22 Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, richest man in the world.
0:53:31 Empowerment failure refers to being unable to accomplish a task without first obtaining permission or information.
0:53:39 It is often a case of being micromanaged or micromanaging someone else, both of which consume your time.
0:53:49 For the employee, the goal is to have full access to necessary information and as much independent decision-making ability as possible.
0:54:00 For the entrepreneur, the goal is to grant as much information and independent decision-making ability to employees or contractors as possible.
0:54:13 Customer service is often the epitome of empowerment failure, and a personal example from BrainQuicken illustrates just how serious, but easily solved, the problem can be.
0:54:22 In 2002, I had outsourced customer service for order tracking and returns, but still handled product-related questions myself.
0:54:23 The result?
0:54:35 I received more than 200 emails per day, spending all hours between 9 to 5 responding to them, and the volume was growing at a rate of more than 10% per week.
0:54:43 I had to cancel advertising and limit shipments, as additional customer service would have been the final nail in the coffin.
0:54:45 It wasn’t a scalable model.
0:54:48 Remember this word, as it will be important later.
0:54:54 It wasn’t scalable, because there was an information and decision bottleneck.
0:54:55 Me.
0:54:56 The clincher?
0:55:08 The bulk of the email that landed in my inbox was not product-related at all, but requests from the outsourced customer service reps seeking permission for different actions.
0:55:12 The customer claims he didn’t receive the shipment.
0:55:13 What should we do?
0:55:16 The customer had a bottle held at customs.
0:55:19 Can we reship to a U.S. address?
0:55:23 The customer needs the product for a competition in two days.
0:55:27 Can we ship overnight, and if so, how much should we charge?
0:55:28 It was endless.
0:55:38 Hundreds upon hundreds of different situations made it impractical to write a manual, and I didn’t have the time or experience to do so regardless.
0:55:41 Fortunately, someone did have the experience.
0:55:44 The outsourced reps themselves.
0:55:54 I sent one single email to all the supervisors that immediately turned 200 emails per day into fewer than 20 emails per week.
0:55:55 Hi, all.
0:56:00 I would like to establish a new policy for my account that overrides all others.
0:56:02 Keep the customer happy.
0:56:09 If it is a problem that takes less than $100 to fix, use your judgment and fix it yourself.
0:56:18 This is official written permission and a request to fix all problems that cost under $100 without contacting me.
0:56:20 I am no longer your customer.
0:56:23 My customers are your customer.
0:56:25 Don’t ask me for permission.
0:56:29 Do what you think is right, and we’ll make adjustments as we go along.
0:56:30 Thank you.
0:56:31 Tim
0:56:41 Upon close analysis, it became clear that more than 90% of the issues that prompted email could be resolved for less than $20.
0:56:52 I reviewed the financial results of their independent decision-making on a weekly basis for four weeks, then a monthly basis, and then on a quarterly basis.
0:57:02 It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them.
0:57:07 The first month cost perhaps $200 more than if I had been micromanaging.
0:57:32 In the meantime, I saved more than 100 hours of my own time per month, customers received faster service, returns dropped to less than 3%, the industry average is 10-15%, and outsourcers spent less time on my account, all of which resulted in rapid growth, higher profit margins, and happier people on all sides.
0:57:34 People are smarter than you think.
0:57:37 Give them a chance to prove themselves.
0:57:46 If you are a micromanaged employee, have a heart-to-heart with your boss and explain that you want to be more productive and interrupt him or her less.
0:57:53 I hate that I have to interrupt you so much and pull you away from more important things I know you have on your plate.
0:57:58 I was doing some reading and had some thoughts on how I might be more productive.
0:58:00 Do you have a second?
0:58:10 Before this conversation, develop a number of “rules” like the previous example that would allow you to work more autonomously with less approval-seeking.
0:58:16 The boss can review the outcome of your decisions on a daily or weekly basis in the initial stages.
0:58:23 Suggest a one-week trial and end with, “I’d like to try it. Does that sound like something we could try for a week?”
0:58:26 Or my personal favorite, “Is that reasonable?”
0:58:30 It’s hard for people to label things unreasonable.
0:58:35 Realize that bosses are supervisors, not slave masters.
0:58:48 Establish yourself as a consistent challenger of the status quo and most people will learn to avoid challenging you, particularly if it is in the interest of higher per-hour productivity.
0:59:00 If you are a micromanaging entrepreneur, realize that even if you can do something better than the rest of the world, it doesn’t mean that’s what you should be doing if it’s part of the minutia.
0:59:04 “Empower others to act without interrupting you.”
0:59:07 Set the rules in your favor.
0:59:09 Limit access to your time.
0:59:13 Force people to define the requests before spending time with them.
0:59:19 And batch routine menial tasks to prevent postponement of more important projects.
0:59:21 Do not let people interrupt you.
0:59:25 Find your focus and you’ll find your lifestyle.
0:59:30 The bottom line is that you have only the rights you fight for.
0:59:42 In the next section, Automation, we’ll see how the new rich create management-free money and eliminate the largest remaining obstacle of all: themselves.
0:59:44 Q&A.
0:59:46 Questions and actions.
0:59:53 People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don’t realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.
0:59:56 Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.
1:00:03 Blaming idiots for interruptions is like blaming clowns for scaring children.
1:00:04 They can’t help it.
1:00:06 It’s their nature.
1:00:13 Then again, I had, who am I kidding, and have, on occasion, been known to create interruptions out of thin air.
1:00:18 If you’re anything like me, that makes us both occasional idiots.
1:00:21 Learn to recognize and fight the interruption impulse.
1:00:27 This is infinitely easier when you have a set of rules, responses, and routines to follow.
1:00:37 It is your job to prevent yourself and others from letting the unnecessary and unimportant prevent the start-to-finish completion of the important.
1:00:49 This chapter differs from the previous in that the necessary actions, due to the inclusion of examples and templates, have been presented throughout from start to finish.
1:00:53 This Q&A will thus be a summary rather than a repetition.
1:00:59 The devil is in the details, so be sure to re-listen to this chapter for the specifics.
1:01:04 The 50,000-foot review is as follows:
1:01:12 1. Create systems to limit your availability via email and phone and deflect inappropriate contact.
1:01:19 2. Get the auto-response and voicemail script in place now and master the various methods of evasion.
1:01:23 3. Replace the habit of “How are you?” with “How can I help you?”
1:01:27 4. Get specific and remember “No stories.”
1:01:29 5. Focus on immediate actions.
1:01:32 6. Set and practice interruption-killing policies.
1:01:35 7. Avoid meetings whenever possible.
1:01:39 8. Use email instead of face-to-face meetings to solve problems.
1:01:41 8. Beg off going.
1:01:44 9. This can be accomplished through the puppy-dog close.
1:01:48 9. If meetings are unavoidable, keep the following in mind:
1:01:50 10. Go in with a clear set of objectives.
1:01:53 10. Set and end time or leave early.
1:02:01 2. Batch activities to limit setup cost and provide more time for dream-line milestones.
1:02:05 What can I routinize by batching?
1:02:12 That is, what tasks, whether laundry, groceries, mail, payments, or sales reporting, for example,
1:02:18 can I allot to a specific time each day, week, month, quarter, or year,
1:02:24 so that I don’t squander time repeating them more often than is absolutely necessary?
1:02:32 3. Set or request autonomous rules and guidelines with occasional review of results.
1:02:38 4. Eliminate the decision bottleneck for all things that are non-fatal if misperformed.
1:02:44 5. If an employee, believe in yourself enough to ask for more independence on a trial basis,
1:02:52 have practical rules prepared, and ask the boss for the sale after surprising him or her with an impromptu presentation.
1:02:57 6. Remember the puppy-dog close. Make it a one-time trial and reversible.
1:03:02 7. For the entrepreneur or manager, give others the chance to prove themselves.
1:03:08 The likelihood of irreversible or expensive problems is minimal, and the time savings are guaranteed.
1:03:14 7. Remember, profit is only profitable to the extent that you can use it.
1:03:16 For that, you need time.
1:03:25 8. Tools and tricks. Eliminating paper distractions. Capturing everything.
1:03:28 8. Evernote. Evernote. Evernote.com
1:03:37 This is perhaps the most impressive tool I’ve found in the last year, introduced to me by some of the most productive technologists in the world.
1:03:50 Evernote has eliminated more than 90% of the paper in my life and eliminated nearly all of the multiple tabs I used to leave open in web browsers, both of which distracted me to no end.
1:03:54 9. It can clear out your entire office clutter in one to three hours.
1:04:05 10. Evernote allows you to easily capture information from anywhere using whatever device is at hand, and everything is then searchable, read findable, from anywhere.
1:04:16 10. I use it to take photographs of everything I might want to remember or find later: business cards, handwritten notes, wine labels, receipts, whiteboard sessions, and more.
1:04:25 11. Evernote identifies the text in all of these pictures automatically, so it’s all searchable, whether from an iPhone, your laptop, or the web.
1:04:36 Just as one example, I can store and find the contact information from any business card in seconds, often using the built-in iSight camera on Mac to capture it,
1:04:43 rather than spending hours inputting it all into contacts or searching through email for that lost phone number.
1:04:48 It’s mind-numbing how much time this saves.
1:04:55 Scan all agreements, paper articles, etc. that would otherwise sit in file folders or on my desk.
1:05:12 The best I’ve found, which scans all of it directly to Evernote in seconds with one button.
1:05:21 Take snapshots of websites, capturing all text and links, so that I can read them offline when traveling or doing later research.
1:05:27 Get rid of all those scattered bookmarks, favorites, and open tabs.
1:05:31 Screening and Avoiding Unwanted Calls
1:05:35 Grand Central
1:05:37 Grand Central
1:05:49 In a world where your physical address will change more often than your cell phone number and email, it can be disastrous if your number becomes public or gets in the wrong hands.
1:05:58 Enter Grand Central, which will give you a number with the area code of your choosing that then forwards to your own phone.
1:06:03 I now give a Grand Central number to anyone besides family and close friends.
1:06:05 Some of the benefits:
1:06:12 Identify any incoming number as unwanted and that caller will then hear a “number not in service” message when attempting to call you.
1:06:26 Customize your voicemail message to individual callers – spouse, boss, colleague, client, etc. – and listen in on messages as they’re being left so you can “pick up” if the message is worth the interruption.
1:06:29 Call recording is also an option.
1:06:38 Use an area code outside of your hometown to prevent people and companies from finding and misusing addresses you’d prefer to keep private.
1:06:45 Establish “do not disturb” hours when calls are routed directly to voicemail with no ring.
1:06:51 Have voicemails sent to your cell phone as SMS – text messages.
1:06:59 U-mail – another option – can also transcribe voicemails and send them to your phone as text messages.
1:07:03 Getting calls while stuck in a time-wasting meeting? No problem.
1:07:09 Respond to voicemails via SMS during the meeting so you’re not stuck returning calls afterward.
1:07:15 One shot, one kill scheduling without e-mail back and forth.
1:07:20 Few things are as time-consuming as scheduling via e-mail.
1:07:23 Person A – how about Tuesday at 3 p.m.?
1:07:25 Person B – I can make it.
1:07:28 Person C – I have a meeting. How about Thursday?
1:07:32 Person D – I’m on a con call. How about 10 a.m. on Friday?
1:07:38 Use these tools to make scheduling simple and fast instead of another part-time job.
1:07:49 Doodle – doodle.com – the best free tool I’ve found for herding cats, multiple people, for scheduling without excessive e-mail.
1:07:55 Create and poll in 30 seconds with the proposed options and forward a link to everyone invited.
1:07:59 Check back a few hours later and you’ll have the best time for the most people.
1:08:03 Time Driver – timedriver.com
1:08:12 Let colleagues and clients self-schedule with you based on your availability, which is determined by integration with Outlook or Google Calendar.
1:08:19 Embed a “Schedule Now” button in e-mail messages and you’ll never have to tell people when you can make a call or meeting.
1:08:22 Let them see what’s open and choose.
1:08:26 Choosing the best e-mail batching times.
1:08:31 Zobni – zobni.com/special
1:08:38 Zobni – inbox spelled backwards – is a free program for putting Outlook on steroids.
1:08:45 It offers many features, but the most relevant to this chapter is its ability to identify hotspots,
1:08:50 or periods of time when you receive the bulk of e-mail from your most important contacts.
1:08:58 These “hotspots” are batching times that will enable you to keep critical contacts – clients, bosses, etc. – smiling,
1:09:03 even while you reduce checking e-mail to one to three times per day.
1:09:12 It will also populate your contacts automatically by pulling phone numbers, addresses, etc. from separate e-mail buried in the inbox.
1:09:17 Emailing without entering the black hole of the inbox
1:09:22 Don’t enter the black hole of the inbox off-hours because you’re afraid you’ll forget something.
1:09:30 Use these services instead to keep focused, whether on completing a critical project or simply enjoying the weekend.
1:09:40 Jot, J-O-T-T dot com. Capture thoughts, create to-dos, and set reminders with a simple, toll-free phone call.
1:09:50 The service transcribes your message – 15 to 30 seconds – and e-mails it to whomever you want, including yourself, or to your Google Calendar for automatic scheduling.
1:10:03 Jot also enables you to post voice message links to Twitter – twitter.com, Facebook – facebook.com, and other services that tend to consume hours if you visit the sites themselves.
1:10:13 CopyTalk, copytalk, copytalk.com, Dictate any message up to four minutes and have the transcription e-mailed to you within hours.
1:10:17 Excellent for brainstorming, and the accuracy is astounding.
1:10:22 Preventing web browsing completely.
1:10:24 Freedom.
1:10:31 iBiblio.org/fred/freedom/
1:10:42 Freedom is a free application that disables networking on an Apple computer for 1 to 480 minutes, up to 8 hours, at a time.
1:10:49 Freedom will free you from the distractions of the Internet, allowing you the focus to get real work done.
1:10:51 Freedom enforces freedom.
1:10:57 A reboot is the only method for turning freedom off before the time limit you’ve set for yourself.
1:11:02 The hassle of rebooting means you’re less likely to cheat, and you’ll be more productive.
1:11:08 Experiment with the software for short periods of time at first – 30 to 60 minutes.
1:11:11 Comfort Challenge.
1:11:14 Revisit the terrible twos.
1:11:15 Two days.
1:11:22 For the next two days, do as all good two-year-olds do and say no to all requests.
1:11:24 Don’t be selective.
1:11:28 Refuse to do all things that won’t get you immediately fired.
1:11:29 Be selfish.
1:11:38 As with the last exercise, the objective isn’t an outcome – in this case, eliminating just those things that waste time – but the process.
1:11:41 Getting comfortable with saying no.
1:11:44 Potential questions to decline include the following:
1:11:46 Do you have a minute?
1:11:49 Do you want to see a movie tonight or tomorrow?
1:11:51 Can you help me with “X”?
1:11:55 No should be your default answer to all requests.
1:11:58 Don’t make up elaborate lies, or you’ll get called on them.
1:12:05 A simple “I really can’t, sorry, I’ve got too much on my plate right now” will do as a catch-all response.
1:12:09 Lifestyle design in action.
1:12:12 Batching Tool: P.O. Box
1:12:21 This might be stating the obvious, but one easy way to encourage batching of your mail is to use a P.O. Box versus getting mail delivered to your house.
1:12:32 We got our P.O. Box to limit access to our physical address online, but it also encourages you to get the mail less and deal with it in batch.
1:12:39 Our post office has recycling bins, so at least 60% of the mail doesn’t even come home with us.
1:12:53 For a while I was only getting and managing the mail once a week, and I found not only did it take less time overall, I did a better job managing it and getting it out of the way, versus looking at it and setting it aside for future follow-up.
1:12:55 Laura Turner
1:13:03 For families, the four-hour work week doesn’t have to mean four months on a sailboat in the Caribbean unless that’s their dream.
1:13:13 But even the simple ideal of having time to take a walk in the park every evening, or spending weekends together, makes taking actions to implement this program worthwhile.
1:13:16 There are many different approaches for making this work.
1:13:22 Kids have to promise they won’t bother mommy in the evening while she works on the computer.
1:13:25 My husband watches the kids in the evening.
1:13:29 Both parents make plans once a week to have someone take care of the kids, etc.
1:13:35 Then close with the huge payoff for the family of having more time to spend with each other.
1:13:37 Adrienne Jenkins
1:13:46 Why not combine a mini-retirement with dentistry or medical geo-arbitrage and finance your trip with the savings?
1:13:54 I lived in Thailand for four months and got root canal treatment and a crown for one-third of the price that it costs in Australia.
1:14:05 There are many upmarket clinics set up for expats and health travelers in Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Goa, etc., with English-speaking dentists.
1:14:09 And in Europe, many people go to Poland or Hungary.
1:14:17 To research, just Google “dentists” and the country and you will come across practices advertising to foreigners.
1:14:23 Talk to expats when you’re in the country or on online chat forums for recommendations.
1:14:31 Now I’m in Australia, I still combine my travels with annual dentist check-ups, and the savings often finance my airfare.
1:14:36 Even between developed countries, there are significant cost differences.
1:14:42 For example, France is far cheaper than the UK, and Australia is cheaper than the U.S.
1:14:57 Note from Tim, learn more about the incredible world of medical tourism and geo-arbitrage at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/medical_tourism.
1:15:03 Even large insurers like Aetna often cover overseas treatments and surgeries.
1:15:05 Anonymous.
1:15:12 Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday.
1:15:17 Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?
1:15:24 Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter, called Five Bullet Friday.
1:15:26 And easy to cancel.
1:15:34 It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I’ve found or discovered or have started exploring over that week.
1:15:36 It’s kind of like my diary of cool things.
1:15:48 It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.
1:15:55 And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you.
1:16:03 So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.
1:16:13 If you’d like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email, and you’ll get the very next one.
1:16:15 Thanks for listening.
1:16:21 I am always on the hunt for protein sources that don’t require sacrifices in taste or nutrition.
1:16:22 I don’t want to eat sawdust.
1:16:26 I also don’t want a candy bar that’s disguised as a protein bar.
1:16:29 And that’s why I love the protein bars from today’s sponsor, David.
1:16:32 They are my go-to protein source on the run.
1:16:37 I throw them in my bag whenever I am in doubt that I might be able to get a good source of protein.
1:16:41 And with David protein bars, you get the fewest calories for the most protein ever.
1:16:47 David has 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, and 0 grams of sugar.
1:16:53 I was actually first introduced to them by my friend Peter Atiyah, MD, who is their chief science officer.
1:16:58 Many of you know of Peter, and he really does his due diligence on everything.
1:17:00 And on top of that, David tastes great.
1:17:02 Their bars come in six delicious flavors.
1:17:03 They’re all worth trying.
1:17:11 And as I mentioned before, I will grab a few of those from running out the door if I think I might end up in a situation where I can’t get sufficient protein.
1:17:12 And why is that important?
1:17:19 Well, adequate protein intake is critical for building and preserving muscle mass, especially as we age.
1:17:26 And one of the biggest things that you want to pay attention to is counteracting sarcopenia, age-related muscle loss.
1:17:28 And for that, you need enough protein.
1:17:30 When in doubt, up your protein.
1:17:32 Protein is also the most satiating macronutrient.
1:17:33 What does that mean?
1:17:40 It means that protein, carbohydrates, fat, and protein, inhibits your appetite while also feeding all the things you want to feed,
1:17:43 which helps you consume fewer calories throughout the day.
1:17:44 You’re less inclined to eat garbage.
1:17:49 All of that contributes to fat loss and reducing the risk of various diseases.
1:17:55 And now, you guys, listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show, who buy four boxes, get a fifth box for free.
1:17:56 You can check it out.
1:17:57 You can also buy one box at a time.
1:18:01 Try them for yourself at davidprotein.com/tim.
1:18:02 Learn all about it.
1:18:08 That’s davidprotein.com/tim to get a free box with a four-box purchase or simply learn more.
1:18:09 Check it out.
1:18:11 Davidprotein.com/tim.
1:18:23 In the last handful of years, I’ve become very interested in environmental toxins, avoiding microplastics, and many other commonly found compounds all over the place.
1:18:25 One place I looked is in the kitchen.
1:18:29 Many people don’t realize just how toxic their cookware is or can be.
1:18:42 A lot of nonstick pans, practically all of them, can release harmful forever chemicals, PFAS, in other words, spelled P-F-A-S, into your food, your home, and then ultimately, that ends up in your body.
1:18:43 Teflon is a prime example of this.
1:18:47 It is still the forever chemical that most companies are using.
1:18:51 So our place reached out to me as a potential sponsor.
1:18:57 And the first thing I did was look at the reviews of their products and said, send me one.
1:19:00 And that is the Titanium Always Pan Pro.
1:19:04 And the claim is that it’s the first nonstick pan with zero coating.
1:19:08 So that means zero forever chemicals and durability that’ll last forever.
1:19:10 I was very skeptical.
1:19:11 I was very busy.
1:19:12 So I said, you know what?
1:19:13 I want to test this thing quickly.
1:19:15 It’s supposed to be nonstick.
1:19:16 It’s supposed to be durable.
1:19:17 I’m going to test it with two things.
1:19:26 I’m going to test it with scrambled eggs in the morning, because eggs are always a disaster in anything that isn’t nonstick with the toxic coating.
1:19:31 And then I’m going to test it with a steak sear, because I want to see how much it retains heat.
1:19:36 And it worked perfectly in both cases.
1:19:40 And I was frankly astonished how well it worked.
1:19:44 The Titanium Always Pan Pro has become my go to pan in the kitchen.
1:19:49 It replaces a lot of other things for searing, for eggs, for anything you can imagine.
1:19:51 And the design is really clever.
1:19:57 It does combine the best qualities of stainless steel, cast iron and nonstick into one product.
1:20:05 And now Our Place is expanding this first-of-its-kind technology to their Titanium Pro cookware sets, which are made in limited quantities.
1:20:18 So if you’re looking for non-toxic, long-lasting pots and pans that outperform everything else in your kitchen, just head to fromourplace.com/tim and use code TIM for 10% off of your order.
1:20:22 You can enjoy a 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and free returns.
1:20:25 Check it out, fromourplace.com/tim.
1:20:57 Transcription by CastingWords