About four years ago a friend of mine introduced me to a podcast, the Tim Ferriss Show. Up until that point, I had never been a regular listener of any podcast, so this was to be a new experience for me.
My friend is a productivity, constant improver type, a category that I also fit into after a lifetime journey of searching how to optimize my time, the quality of what I produce and the quality of my life.
“This podcast has everything you need” my friend said. “Tim Ferriss is the king of constant self-improvement and productivity hacks”.
The odd thing is that this wasn’t my first contact with this Tim Ferriss character. On my bookcase I had one of his books, probably his most famous “The Four-Hour Work Week”. I had purchased this when I was toying with opening a side gig to my daytime job as a financial accountant, an activity that I have been successful at but has never really fulfilled me. It´s a demanding job with long hours and the idea of finding another role in life has always appealed.
However, there was to be no epiphany moment for me from Ferriss´s book. It was an interesting read, but it certainly didn’t seem appropriate as a plan for someone with a young family to support and a mortgage to pay. It sat on my bookshelf as another in a long line of “self-help” books that I had purchased and whose actions I hadn’t put into practice.
So now back to the podcast. I can’t for the life of me remember what the first episode was that my friend recommended, but I did click on that link and began to listen.
From that moment I was hooked.
The first thing to comment is that these podcasts are often close to an hour and a half long! This takes some commitment to listen through. My place is either
a) my car, where I substituted the daily news (with no real added value to my life) with a series of the episodes from Ferriss.
b) my daily run, where the motivational Spotify track has been replaced by a Ferriss podcast.
Tim brings on to his show people from across the globe and across the professions who are experts in their fields, from productivity gurus, to actors, athletes and sportsmen and women, business leaders, scientists, authors, politicians, military experts, spirituality gurus, coaches….you name the profession and Tim will almost certainly have interviewed someone from that area.
In each episode, Tim Ferriss reveals his true skill. He interviews each of these people without pretension, the show is about them, not him. He relaxes the guest down and then probes with a series of questions that often go far deeper than the guest will ever have imagined (down the rabbit-hole as Ferriss puts it).
Tim Ferriss had a pleasant East Coast American accent and he comes across as genuinely interested in hearing what his guests have to say on how they have become successful. This includes probing for both the high moments and the failures of each interviewee.
After having played thirty to forty episodes, I suddenly realized that Ferriss has a super-skill….. he really, genuinely listens.
Tim probes and pushes with questions that in some cases are quite similar in each of his shows, but he extracts pearls of wisdom from every guest without fail. The whole thing is fascinating. Not a show goes by without an idea, a quote a book or a film being names that doesn’t lead the listener to a whole series of follow-up reading or investigation to carry out.
Tim Ferriss also lets you into his own personal life and the hacks and self-improvement ideas that are in themselves a gold-mine for anyone looking to enhance the way they live. Tim tries out many of the ideas that he hears from guests or friends and then reports back to his listeners on what has worked for him and what has not.
Not only that, once hooked on the content of Ferriss, the listener has a set of other products that Tim puts out, especially his books (I now own Tribe of Mentors, Tools of Titans and the Four-Hour chef as well as the aforementioned Four-Hour Work Week). These books may not be masterpieces, but they are entertaining and filled with wisdom.
On wisdom, the other thing I would add on Mr Ferriss is that he is willing to open-up on his own complicated early life and the fears and challenges he has faced. His TED talk on fear and his suicidal depression is well worth a watch. Here is a man who is driven to find his place in the world after a whole series of mishaps. A successful entrepreneur and writer who nonetheless gives the sensation of not having made it and is still in the pursuit of happiness (if that is not too trite).
As time has gone on over the past couple of years, I have found that Tim Ferriss´s initial formulaic interview style has given way to a far more relaxed and assured approach that he takes and has led to some of his interviews being quite simply superb. In fact, if I had to name one of my most entertaining moments from this COVID 19 ravaged year, it would be the one hour 30 minute interview that Tim Ferriss had with Hugh Jackman. I was driving back from the Costa Brava to my house in Barcelona late at night, having left my family in our holiday home for the summer. It was set to be a long, boring, lonely drive but it was one of the (few) highlights of my year. Pure entertainment and a quite brilliant conversation that made the almost two-hour journey flash by.
Over the last three years with the Tim Ferriss show there have been other highlights and introductions to a world of experts (and subsequent book purchases and investigations from my side). My list would include Michael Pollen, Gary Keller, Jocko Willink, Derek Sivers, Jamie Fox, Sir Richard Branson….
In fact, the only show over the time I have listened that I can say fell short was the big headline Lebron James interview, where I found the format and control that Lebron´s team put down as conditions for the interview didn´t allow for Tim to really get deep enough into the conversation.
Tim Ferriss has even got me into philosophy, or specifically the philosophy of Stoicism of which he is an advocate. I have become an avid reader of the ancient stoic texts and now listen regularly to another podcast from one of Tim Ferriss´s own list of interviewees and friends, Ryan Holiday.
So, all in all, Tim Ferriss has led me to a fountain of knowledge, tips for improving my way of living and a whole set of virtual mentors and experts who candidly have expressed their own learnings and failures, nuggets of wisdom that have been transmitted in a most entertaining manner. Maybe not every show has the same impact, but inevitably there is something to be found in them all.
All of this content is free. Sure, you listen to some advertisements throughout the podcasts and the books are available to buy for those who want to try them, but the ideas, the interviews, the entertainment, the inspiration from the podcasts are all free!
Despite this, Tim has his haters. People who accuse him of making a fast buck on the back of all he does. They claim that the hacks and ideas from his show don’t work. Or the fact that the ideas from his initial book “The Four-Hour Work Week” are simply impossible to put into action.
On this last point, perhaps I would agree. However, Tim Ferriss has put out so much valuable, entertaining and important content through what come across as his genuine efforts to make this world a better place, that the “false guru” tag he is often accused of simply doesn´t stick.
In my case I have spent hours listening with Tim to new ideas from fascinating people and putting many of these ideas to real practical use in my own life. As a result, I have found real-life experts and, yes, “gurus” to follow.
None of that was what I signed up for when I started that first podcast. I didn’t know I would spend hours listening. There was no warning on the tin. Or that I would be bombarded with inspiration, episode after episode. The Tim Ferriss show doesn’t come with a “danger – your life could be seriously altered by this product” label. Ferriss doesn´t sell you any product. He sucks you in without warning and years later I am still hooked.
You can see none of that from reading the profile of this bald-headed, easy talking American or the notes explaining what his show is about.
For that reason, Tim Ferriss is a fraud (and long may he continue being just that!).