This is the 10% Happier Podcast.

I'm Dan Harris.

Hello everybody. How we doing? Today I'm'm talking to my man, Tim Ferriss, who is these days leading, in his words, a different life.

As some of you may know, Tim has a long and difficult history with OCD, anxiety, depression, and trauma.

Today, you're going to hear him talk very candidly about what he's done to create this

different life.

You're also going to hear him talk about what he thinks about self-optimizing.

He is in many ways, kind of the grandfather of optimization, a notion with which many

of you, and I would include myself in this category, have a tortured

relationship, maybe a love-hate relationship. Tim talks about the risks of optimizing and how

he's become much more surgical about what he optimizes for. He's also going to talk about a book

in progress on the immense power of saying no so that you can focus on the things that are

actually important to you. This is also something that I struggle with immensely. In case you're

new to Tim and his work, Tim Ferriss is the author of five number one New York Times bestsellers,

including the four-hour work week and Tools of Titans. He's also the host of the excellent Tim Ferriss show podcast.

And most recently, he's collaborated with the company Exploding Kittins to create a game

called Coyote. It's a card game. This is a wide-ranging interview, aside from optimization

and the power of saying no, we also talk about Tim's antidotes to isolation,

his practice of doing past year reviews, his meditation practice, escaping ruminative loops,

the role of something called accelerated transcranial magnetic stimulation, the ketogenic diet,

his views on talking to chatbots about your medical stuff and much more.

Before we dive in here, a very quick plug for my new app, 10% with Dan Harris.

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