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The Tim Ferriss Show

#841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred

The Tim Ferriss Show

Tim Ferriss: Bestselling Author, Human Guinea Pig

Timothy Ferriss Show, Startups, Tools Of Titans, Lifestyle Design, The 4-hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss, Tim Ferriss, Longform Interviews, Entrepreneurship, Productivity, Business, Tim Ferris, The Tim Ferriss Show

4.6 • 17.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2025

⏱️ 130 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Arthur C. Brooks is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness. His next book, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness, will be released on March 31, 2026.

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Timestamps:

  • [00:00:00] Start.
  • [00:02:33] The vascular Arthur Brooks returns.
  • [00:03:07] Brahmamuhurta and why Arthur studies happiness.
  • [00:06:20] Arthur’s morning workout protocol.
  • [00:09:58] Why Arthur does Zone 2 cardio without headphones.
  • [00:10:38] Quantifying progress as the secret to happiness.
  • [00:20:50] Post-workout holy half-hour.
  • [00:22:25] Creatine, caffeine strategy, and 60-70 grams of protein for breakfast.
  • [00:29:50] Four hours of distraction-free deep work and Hemingway’s protocol.
  • [00:32:21] Alcohol kills sleep to borrow happiness from tomorrow.
  • [00:34:36] My ketosis, intermittent fasting, and morning protocol.
  • [00:39:34] Experimentation is king.
  • [00:46:29] David Baszucki, metabolic psychiatry, and ketosis: the poet’s protocol.
  • [00:48:20] Four affect profiles: mad scientists, cheerleaders, judges, and poets.
  • [00:54:13] Why Arthur was moved to write The Meaning of Your Life.
  • [00:55:52] Psychogenic epidemic: technology isn’t the problem, it’s what we’re not getting.
  • [00:59:33] Macronutrients of meaning: coherence, purpose, significance.
  • [01:03:38] Search vs. presence and the trap for seekers.
  • [01:07:53] Marine rule: get to 80 percent and choose.
  • [01:12:07] Significance at micro, not macro level; cult of activism as substitute religion.
  • [01:17:22] Transcendence: from me self to I self; Harvard’s Astronomy 101.
  • [01:19:35] Two dimensions of transcendence: upward (worship) and outward (service).
  • [01:21:48] Maslow revised: training awareness so the mundane becomes miraculous.
  • [01:28:45] Flow state as self-forgetting; beauty as transcendence.
  • [01:32:12] Living in the simulation: complicated vs. complex problems.
  • [01:37:55] Left hemisphere vs. right hemisphere.
  • [01:42:18] Your suffering is sacred: pain times resistance.
  • [01:46:30] Pilgrimage as metaphor.
  • [01:55:42] AI as left-brain adjunct.
  • [01:57:18] Arthur’s evening protocol: Psalms and Neruda.
  • [02:00:13] The oxytocin protocol for marriage, break glass plan.
  • [02:04:31] Happiness is love and other parting thoughts.

*

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show,

0:04.6

where it is my job to interview and deconstruct world-class performers, people who are exceptionally

0:10.2

good in one or more dimensions to figure out how they do it. How can you take frameworks,

0:15.1

influences, books, habits, and copy and paste from their lives into your own. My guest today is a very impressive full

0:24.4

stack human. He walks the talk. He's not just a commentator. He is a player on the field.

0:30.4

And I have observed how he acts and creates meaning in his own life in multiple dimensions with great admiration. Arthur

0:39.7

Brooks. Arthur Brooks is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business

0:44.5

School where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness. He is also the host of the weekly

0:48.8

podcast, Office Hours with Arthur Brooks and a columnist at the Atlantic where he writes the popular weekly

0:54.9

How to Build a Life column, who wouldn't like a column titled How to Build a Life? His next book,

1:00.4

The Meaning of Your Life, Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness, will be released on March 31st,

1:06.9

2026. And in this conversation, Arthur and I traverse a lot of terrain. I dig into his routines,

1:14.6

morning routines, evening routines, workout routines, blood flow restriction, bands and technology

1:21.3

for greater gains and fewer injuries as you age. I really get into a lot of the tactical.

1:27.1

And we also discuss how you could take something really get into a lot of the tactical. And we also discuss

1:28.4

how you could take something that seems esoteric, creating meaning, and turn it into frameworks that

1:34.7

you can apply to counteract the wave and trend of nihilism in the face of overwhelming noise

1:43.0

and doom scrolling and so on. This is, of course,

1:47.0

a topic, a question, a dilemma that has faced humans that has been discussed for millennia,

1:52.1

but it has never been more important, in my opinion, and we cover a lot that you can take

1:58.5

and use in this conversation. So let's get to it. Arthur Brooks. You can find

2:02.1

him at Arthur Brooks.com. We will link to all of the socials. He's easy to find. Without further

...

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