How to Find Mentors | Tim Ferriss & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | - I have a question about mentors.
00:00:05.000 | I'm a big believer in mentors,
00:00:07.480 | either mentors that know us and we know them
00:00:10.420 | or people that we assign as mentors
00:00:12.540 | without them realizing it, this sort of thing.
00:00:15.480 | Do you have mentors at this stage of life
00:00:19.580 | for particular areas of life?
00:00:22.000 | Are you mentoring yourself?
00:00:24.580 | Are you flying with a few voices in your head
00:00:29.180 | that serve you well?
00:00:30.380 | Who are your mentors?
00:00:31.600 | - I definitely have people I consider mentors.
00:00:35.360 | I think at this point, rarely one way
00:00:40.080 | in the sense that they tend to be friends
00:00:43.840 | I spend time with.
00:00:45.700 | They get something from it, I get something from it.
00:00:48.100 | Not in a transactional way,
00:00:49.620 | but they find it fun or beneficial or amusing,
00:00:54.180 | in some way redeeming to spend time with me.
00:00:56.500 | That's the hope.
00:00:57.340 | - But how is that different from traditional friendship,
00:01:00.460 | your sort of standard friendship?
00:01:02.060 | Are you spending time with some orientation
00:01:06.220 | toward their embodying areas of life
00:01:10.620 | that you would like to emulate?
00:01:12.380 | - Totally.
00:01:13.460 | I spend time around people I hope to be more like,
00:01:18.380 | in some way.
00:01:20.020 | Because guess what?
00:01:20.860 | You're going to average into, say,
00:01:25.980 | the sum, holistic whole of the five or six people
00:01:29.300 | you spend the most time with.
00:01:30.220 | So you should choose that very carefully.
00:01:31.580 | That includes virtual parasocial relationships.
00:01:34.420 | Like, okay, if you're listening
00:01:35.580 | to a fill-in-the-blank person for four hours a week,
00:01:39.460 | five hours a week, two hours a week,
00:01:41.380 | whoever that group is comprised of
00:01:45.440 | is going to influence who you become.
00:01:47.100 | And for me, then, I think carefully about my friendships.
00:01:52.100 | And they could be older, like Kevin Kelly
00:01:55.220 | who's become a good friend,
00:01:56.780 | who has a wealth of life experience that I don't have.
00:02:02.140 | And so I might just call him and say,
00:02:03.860 | "Kevin, I have a question for you."
00:02:05.020 | But I do that with my younger friends, too.
00:02:06.660 | And they could be younger than I am,
00:02:08.020 | and I might still view them as a mentor in X, Y, or Z.
00:02:11.140 | I think mentor has a heavy weight to it.
00:02:15.100 | It has a connotation of maybe never-ending,
00:02:20.100 | time-consuming obligation.
00:02:23.460 | So I would never, for instance,
00:02:25.900 | and I know a lot of people try this,
00:02:27.020 | ask someone to be my mentor.
00:02:29.220 | It's like, "Would you like to be
00:02:30.040 | "my free life coach forever?"
00:02:31.380 | You know, it's like, (laughs)
00:02:32.220 | that's kind of how it sounds to the recipient.
00:02:34.500 | - It sounds very formal.
00:02:35.820 | - Yeah, it sounds very formal.
00:02:37.180 | So for me, I would say there have certainly been mentors.
00:02:41.260 | I've had wrestling coaches, I've had teachers,
00:02:44.140 | I've had resident advisors who are reverence,
00:02:47.820 | who had a huge impact on my life,
00:02:49.420 | and followed up with me, and paid attention to me,
00:02:51.620 | and cared for me.
00:02:53.140 | In more of a one-directional sense, right?
00:02:58.140 | I view myself as the beneficiary.
00:03:00.860 | Of course, they certainly got something out of it
00:03:02.980 | if they had that job.
00:03:03.820 | I mean, they probably found it
00:03:05.300 | to be very gratifying in its own way.
00:03:07.540 | And teachers like Professor Ed Hsiao at Princeton,
00:03:10.620 | I feel incredibly indebted to.
00:03:13.260 | These days, and for a long time,
00:03:18.940 | I've believed that you can learn something powerful
00:03:23.340 | from almost anyone, probably anyone you interact with.
00:03:27.860 | Could be an Uber driver,
00:03:29.420 | could be someone taking garbage out of a restaurant.
00:03:32.660 | If you really take the time to dig, you can find something.
00:03:35.500 | And before you can, I think as an adult,
00:03:40.500 | effectively think about who you would like to learn from,
00:03:45.980 | if I put it that way.
00:03:47.060 | It's helpful to have a baseline of self-awareness
00:03:50.660 | so you know what you might want to work on
00:03:54.180 | to either amplify strengths,
00:03:57.180 | develop skills, address weaknesses.
00:03:59.820 | And so for instance, one of my close friends,
00:04:01.740 | Matt Mullenweg, he's younger than I am.
00:04:03.980 | He's the founder of Automatic, which runs WordPress.com.
00:04:08.220 | He was the lead developer of WordPress,
00:04:10.380 | although it was an open-source project,
00:04:11.660 | of course, with many, many contributors.
00:04:13.900 | He was one of the lead developers,
00:04:15.740 | now powers something like 32% of the internet.
00:04:18.620 | And he exemplifies a cool and calm temperament,
00:04:23.620 | even in the most chaotic periods imaginable,
00:04:29.060 | during the most chaotic events imaginable.
00:04:31.700 | And when I find myself getting dysregulated,
00:04:36.700 | to use a fancy term, losing my shit,
00:04:40.020 | or getting carried away by emotion,
00:04:42.580 | getting righteously angry, or whatever it might be,
00:04:45.180 | and I recognize at some point
00:04:46.780 | that it's really not serving me,
00:04:48.620 | that I am being owned by the emotion, right?
00:04:51.940 | Like I'm the dog on the leash, not the other way around.
00:04:55.220 | Then I think of Matt.
00:04:56.660 | I'm like, what would Matt do?
00:04:58.740 | What advice would Matt give me right now?
00:05:00.860 | How would Matt act in these circumstances?
00:05:04.060 | And I do that with many friends.
00:05:07.820 | I also think a lot about,
00:05:11.660 | and this is borrowing from someone named Cathy Sierra,
00:05:15.300 | from a long time ago,
00:05:16.900 | focusing more on just-in-time information
00:05:18.940 | as opposed to just-in-case information.
00:05:21.100 | So just-in-case information is like,
00:05:23.060 | I'm gonna read these 20 books
00:05:24.220 | 'cause in two years I might be interested in X, Y, and Z.
00:05:28.460 | That, I think, is often a waste of time
00:05:31.060 | because if it ever becomes relevant,
00:05:32.860 | you're just gonna have to reread those books.
00:05:34.940 | People do the same thing with humans.
00:05:37.220 | They're like, I wanna meet so-and-so
00:05:39.580 | and have them as my mentor
00:05:40.980 | because maybe five years from now,
00:05:43.140 | I'll do X, Y, and Z,
00:05:44.380 | and then they'll be useful for ABC.
00:05:46.860 | That's too speculative.
00:05:48.180 | And I think it ends up in a lot of wasted energy.
00:05:50.380 | So the podcast, for me,
00:05:53.420 | writing the books and doing the interviews,
00:05:57.180 | even prior to the podcast,
00:05:58.940 | becoming involved with startups,
00:06:00.820 | delving into the world of science and scientists,
00:06:05.220 | all helps me to develop a confidence
00:06:08.860 | that almost any question I could ask,
00:06:13.860 | I can find some semblance of an answer for
00:06:16.820 | by just reaching out to a few people and saying,
00:06:18.580 | who do you know who might be able to answer this?
00:06:21.820 | And that's very reassuring,
00:06:23.940 | and it relieves some of the anxiety or pressure
00:06:28.380 | that people might feel
00:06:29.900 | to assemble some personal board of directors
00:06:32.260 | of X-men and women who can help them with everything.
00:06:37.420 | And then there are people I hire to be accountable to.
00:06:40.780 | So I might work with coaches, therapists, and so on,
00:06:44.740 | who I would view as mentors.
00:06:46.620 | They just happen to get paid for it.
00:06:48.540 | (laughs)
00:06:49.660 | (upbeat music)
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