Important Questions to Ask Yourself | Tim Ferriss & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | Most people have probably heard the hypothetical question, what would you do if you knew you
00:00:06.400 | couldn't fail?
00:00:08.440 | What would you do if you couldn't fail?
00:00:10.640 | And Seth turns that around.
00:00:12.760 | I think that's a good question.
00:00:13.760 | But he turns around and said, what would you do if you knew you were going to fail?
00:00:18.520 | In terms of identifying what you would do for the process, what would you do if you
00:00:24.240 | knew it was going to fail?
00:00:25.240 | Okay, you're considering these five different projects.
00:00:26.960 | Let's say they're all going to fail, but you still have to choose one of the five.
00:00:30.160 | Which would you choose?
00:00:31.160 | Yeah, that's a great question.
00:00:35.240 | Much harder to answer.
00:00:37.160 | And at the same time, I'm called back to when I was a graduate student and still now with
00:00:43.400 | the podcast, I have this litmus test, which is, is the experiment that I'm working on
00:00:51.640 | the one that I want to be working on most?
00:00:53.760 | Is the podcast that I'm working on the one that I want to be working on most?
00:00:56.320 | I mean, there's truly no other podcast I'd rather be having today than this one.
00:01:00.520 | And the moment I'm starting to think, oh, I wish I was doing that thing over there,
00:01:04.160 | I realize I'm off target.
00:01:06.040 | I'm off target.
00:01:07.040 | And I think that asking really good questions is something clearly that you're very good
00:01:12.680 | at.
00:01:13.680 | And getting a little bit deeper into your process around that, do you write those things
00:01:17.560 | down?
00:01:18.560 | Like, is there a notebook someplace in the kingdom of Tim Ferriss in Austin or elsewhere
00:01:25.080 | that says, you know, those questions that, that essentially those questions are written?
00:01:29.760 | Are they?
00:01:30.760 | Yeah.
00:01:31.760 | I collect, I literally have a document with questions that I've gathered from Seth printed
00:01:35.120 | out and at the Airbnb where I'm staying here.
00:01:38.400 | You brought it with you.
00:01:39.640 | I printed it out here and then I went through and I read it last night and I was highlighting
00:01:43.320 | questions from past interviews I've had with him on my podcast to revisit his questions.
00:01:49.400 | So I was literally doing that last night over dinner and I collect questions.
00:01:54.400 | I collect questions.
00:01:55.960 | If I am reading a magazine and I come across a good question, I take, I take a photo or
00:02:00.200 | I capture it somehow in notes or in Evernote, which I know is kind of old fashioned these
00:02:04.520 | days, but I've used it for everything.
00:02:05.960 | So the critical mass is beyond enormous and I do collect and revisit these things.
00:02:13.120 | I capture them in journals as well, but I absolutely capture good questions when I find
00:02:18.520 | them.
00:02:19.960 | Questions are so powerful for the brain.
00:02:21.440 | I don't want to go into this in too much detail cause I have a lot more questions for you,
00:02:25.080 | but we just wrapped a series on mental health that will come out later this year with Paul
00:02:30.840 | Conti and he is brilliant as we both know and does truly important work.
00:02:36.560 | And he pointed to the value of asking really good questions about oneself and because of
00:02:43.360 | the way that questions that are really directed at self inquiry queue up the subconscious.
00:02:50.440 | So you ask the question and unlike a statement or a meme, the brain works with that in the
00:02:57.400 | days and hours after asking the question in ways that simple declarative statements probably
00:03:03.320 | don't ping the system the same way, which is probably why we can see so many points
00:03:08.280 | of wisdom and truth everywhere and it doesn't necessarily transform us, but asking really
00:03:12.500 | good questions really does seem to transform us.
00:03:15.480 | Yeah, there's, I think judging people by their questions is also a shortcut to assessing
00:03:25.000 | and learning a lot about how someone functions and what makes them tick.
00:03:28.840 | I think it was Voltaire who said, you know, judge a man by his questions, not by his answers.
00:03:33.720 | Something along those lines.
00:03:34.960 | But when in doubt, attribute to Voltaire.
00:03:36.440 | It sounds good.
00:03:37.440 | It does sound good.
00:03:38.440 | And I think about this a lot.
00:03:40.040 | I do think about the questions and I refine the questions that I ask myself, especially
00:03:45.480 | while journaling because it's easier to cross examine and stress test your own certainty
00:03:52.640 | and beliefs when they are captured on paper or digitally on a laptop, for instance.
00:04:00.920 | So I do routinely revisit certain questions that I've found helpful over time.
00:04:07.760 | I mean, one that people can play with is with whatever is really causing you consternation
00:04:14.320 | or stress at the moment, some kind of decision or relationship, business, could be anything.
00:04:20.360 | Just what might this look like if it were easy?
00:04:24.080 | What might this look like if it were easy, if it had to be easy, if that were possible,
00:04:27.960 | what might it look like?
00:04:29.720 | And that could apply to anything.
00:04:30.720 | It could apply to anything, you know, could apply to could apply to fitness.
00:04:34.240 | It's like, look, if you do really intense kettlebell swings twice a week with proper
00:04:39.760 | weight and load and time under tension, and you do pushups a few times a week and handle
00:04:45.760 | a couple of other elements, you can get in pretty good shape.
00:04:50.640 | It's so simple, but it hits a lot.
00:04:54.200 | I mean, it hits your entire posterior chain.
00:04:55.840 | Okay, fine.
00:04:56.840 | Do some pushups and some core work, but if you're not exercising at all because you've
00:05:01.880 | made the assumption that it's four hours, five hours a week, rather than completely
00:05:09.000 | remove that objective and call it just impractical, can you ratchet down the scale?
00:05:18.400 | How far can you ratchet down the scale until you have no excuses?
00:05:21.600 | That would just be one example, language learning, tech investing, it applies to everything.
00:05:29.440 | Making life easier is something that definitely gets my vote.
00:05:32.560 | Yeah.
00:05:33.560 | Making it easier and making it more elegant, right?
00:05:35.560 | The more pieces in your life you have floating around, the more contacts, the more extraneous
00:05:40.240 | loose connections, the harder your life is going to be.
00:05:43.320 | The cognitive overload or overhead is really high.
00:05:47.680 | So I'm always looking for maybe like Japanese flower arranger.
00:05:52.360 | It's like, okay, how many pieces can I remove while still like maintaining the essence of
00:05:56.780 | what I'm trying to achieve?
00:05:58.080 | You and Rick Rubin, man, I'm telling you, two people I am fortunate enough to know personally
00:06:03.200 | and that I have tremendous respect for and the work is self-evident.
00:06:09.760 | It's really remarkable.
00:06:10.960 | So rewind that and listen to that segment right there, folks.
00:06:14.760 | I'm telling you, I've worked hard to apply it because it's not my default and boy, does
00:06:19.680 | it make a significant improvement to simplify, simplify, simplify.