how to use philosophy as a personal operating system

7/30/2019 How to Use Philosophy as a Personal Operating System

1/9

How to Use Philosophy as a

Personal Operating System: From

Seneca to Musashi164 CommentsWritten by Tim Ferriss

Topics: Mental Performance, Practical Philosophy

(Photo credit:Graphistolage)

The following interview is a slightly modified version of an interview that

just appeared on BoingBoing.

It explores philosophical systems as personal operating systems (for better

decision-making), the value of college and MBAs, and the bridge between

business and military strategy, among other things.


2/9

Avi first reached out to discuss my practical obsession with the philosopher

Lucius Seneca, so thats where we start

From Seneca to Musashi

Avi Solomon: How did you get to Seneca? Tim Ferriss:I came toSeneca by looking at military strategies. A lot ofmilitary writing is based onStoic philosophical principles. The three cited sources arefirst Marcus Aurelius and his book Meditations, which was effectively a war

campaign journal. The second is Epictetus and his handbook Enchiridion,

which I find difficult to read. The last is Seneca and, because Seneca was

translated from Latin to English as opposed to from Greek to English, and

also because he was a very accomplished writer and a playwright, I find

his readingsto be more memorable and actionable.So, Seneca came to me through a number of different vehicles. First,

through the study of war and war strategy. Second was throughphilosophers like Thoreau and Emerson who were also fans of Seneca.

Thirdly, was when I was really embracing minimalism and trying to

eliminate the trivial many, both materially and otherwise. From a business

standpoint, Seneca is constantly cited by people in the less is more camp

of philosophical thought.

Part of what appealed to me about Seneca was the similarity I found

between his brand of stoic thought and the brands of Buddhism and ZenBuddhism that were practiced by people like Musashi Miyamoto. He wrote

The Book of Five Ringsand is also the most famous Japanese swordsmanin history.

Avi: Did you also read James Stockdale?

Tim:Absolutely. You said James Stockdale, right? He was in a POWcamp.

Avi: Yeah, in Vietnam.

Tim:Yeah, absolutely. He would be one of dozens of military leaders whohave embraced Stoicism to survive and to win in combat.

Avi: Do you have a favorite letter of Seneca? Tim:Offhand, it would behard for me to choose a single one. The first that comes to mind is On the

Shortness of Life,which is more of an essay. Ive read Letters from a Stoic


3/9

at least 50times and I tend to find different letters appropriate and helpfulat different times.

Avi: Theres a difference between reading and doing. How do you

apply this in your daily life? Tim:Its really, for me, the base foundationof an operating system for decision making, and Ill explain what I mean bythat. I dont view philosophy as an idle form of intellectual masturbation. I

really view good philosophy as a set of rules that allows you to make better

decisions. What Stoicism helps you to develop is a value system that

allows you to take calculated risks, which I think is very effective for

entrepreneurs.

So, in very simple terms, stoicism and, by extension, Seneca teaches you

to value only those things that cannot be taken away, meaning you would

actively practice poverty, for example, subsisting on the meagerest of food

and clothing for, lets just say, one week every two months. The waySeneca would phrase it is all the while asking yourself, Is this the

condition I so feared?

That type of practiceand I do view it as a practice, just like you viewmeditation as a practice and I dont think its entirely coincidence that

Marcus Aurelius book is called Meditationshelps you to live lifeoffensively as opposed to defensively. So, I would say that on a daily basis

I revert to some of the basic principles of stoicism to make decisions about

where to invest my time, which relationships to cultivate, which

relationships to sever so forth and so on.

Avi: And its also making you comfortable with failure. The essence

of entrepreneurship is being OK with failure and with having fears.

Tim:Yes, absolutely. It also helps condition you so that you dont haveemotional overreactions to things that you cant control and I think thats

very, very helpful. Critical even, not only for competitive advantage but forquality of life.

Avi: Do you have a generic method for hacking some advanced skillset. You seem to have hacked so many advanced topics that you

musthave a method to your madness!Tim:Well, I do have a method and its really a series of questions morethan anything else. Its almost a Socratic process but I would say that, firstand foremost, I have to have a very clear, measurable objective, whether


4/9

thats in language acquisition or in power lifting.

The common element is measurement, so you need to know when you

have succeeded and how to measure progress to that success point,

whether thats a 500 pound dead lift or a 50 kilometer ultra marathon or

getting to the point where you can do, lets say, a single lap in an Olympicpool with 15 or fewer strokes. These are all real examples. The number of

footfalls, meaning stride rate, per minute in endurance training and how

long I can sustain that for say with a goal of 20minutes at a time. Or a 95percent fluency in conversational German as measured through different

metrics. Again, all real examples.

So the first is measurement. I have a clear idea of what success looks like

and how to measure it.

Secondly, I will look at the most common approaches, which are,oftentimes, the lowest common denominator but have some thread of

efficacy. I will ask, What if I did the opposite? I ll look at the established

common practices, the established dogma, and ask myself what if I did the

opposite.

If its endurance training, lets look at Iron Man training, and the average is

20-30 hours of training per week for people in the upper quartile. What if I

limited that to five or fewer hours per week? What would I have todo? Howcould I make this type of training work, or perhaps be more effective, if I

had to focus on low volume instead of high volume? The same could besaid of weight training. The same could be said of language learning.

If someone says it takes a lifetime to learn a language or it should take 10

years, what if I had to compress that into 10 weeks? I know it s

impossible, but what if? And if they say that vocabulary comes first

because we should learn as we did when we were a child, which I

completely disagree withits entirely unfoundedwhat if you were tostart with a radicals (Japanese/Chinese) or grammar instead?

So, flipping things on their heads and looking at opposites can providesome very surprising discoveries and shortcuts.

Thirdly, I look for anomalies. For any given skill, theres going to be an

archetype of someone should be successful at that skill. If it s swimming,

for example, it would be someone with the build of Michael Phelps. They

would have a long wingspan, relatively tall, big hands, big feet and large


5/9

lung capacity. So, if I can find someone who defies those anatomicalproportions say, someone whos 55, extremely heavily muscled, like250, who is still an effective swimmer I want to study what theanomalies practice because attributes can compensate for poor training. I

want to find someone who lacks the attributes that can allow them to

compensate for poor training.

Typically, you find much more refined approaches when you look at the

anomalies. Thats true for any skill I have looked at, whether thats

programming or otherwise. So, lets just take computer programming. If the

common belief is that someone should start with language A, then

progress to framework B and then progress to language C, if I can find

someone who skipped those first two steps and is regarded as one of the

best programmers in language C, Im going to look closely at how they

developed that skill set. In some cases, it correlates to their use of

analogies and background from music or natural languages (for example,

Derek Siversor Chad Fowler)Then I would say, lastly, is a set of questions related to rate of progress.

So I dont just look at the best people in the world; I look at people who

have improved upon their base condition in the shortest period of time

possible.

Lets say Im looking at muscular gain. I would certainly interview the

person whos, lets say, 300 pounds and 7% body fat, but there s a very

good chance that Ill learn more from the person whos put on 50 poundsfor the first time in their life in the last 12 months. So, I always try to

establish the rate of progress and, when that person has plateaued at

different points, for what duration. I find that exceptionally helpful also for

finding non-obvious solutions to problems.

Avi: Thanks, I would call that a meta-hack! It might take a while to

digest but it could drive a lot of things in many different domains.

Tim:Oh, sure. Thats the framework that I overlay on any skill Im lookingto analyze and hack.

Avi: So like in language learning, you have one critical sentence I

think.Tim:Right. Each of these different skill sets will have certaindomain-specific approaches, but in the case of languages, a big part of

learning language quickly is teaching native speakers to deconstruct their

own language for you. You only do that through very refined questioning,


6/9

because theyre not going to be able to explain to you the difference

between abstract concepts.

If you say, Whats the difference between anything and something? the

average native English speakers not going to give you a good answer, but

if you know how to ask them for comparisons properly and you can simplyask them to, perhaps, provide five or six examples of various types then

you can get your answer [so, focusing on deductive learning vs. inductive].

You can essentially use a lateral approach to get your answers. So, in myparticular case, it had determined that we had eight to twenty sentences of

various types, if you have them translated effectively. Fortunately for native

English speakers most of the world is forced to study English or chooses to

study English.

If you translate those 8 to 20 sentences, youll have a very good grasp of

auxiliary verbs, sentence structure, like subject-object

-verb versus subject

-

verb-object, how indirect objects, direct objects are treated, how personal

pronouns are treated, etc., and it only takes 8-20 sentences to get all of

that onto one sheet of paper. So, its entirely possible to become fluent in

almost any language. Conversationally fluenttheres a problem withdefinition thereso thats a longer conversation, but effectively what mostpeople would consider conversationally fluent in 8-12weeks.Avi: So again, theres also the traces of Paretos law there.

Tim:Without a doubt. The material you choose is oftentimes moreimportant than the method you use, so its important to have an

understanding of high frequency versus rote memorization from a textbook

that doesnt do any kind of analysis of frequency of occurrence, for

example.

Avi: Food, for example, you boil it down to eggs and spinach first

thing in the morning.Tim: Exactly. In behavioral change related todiet,small changes are more effective than big changes. The abandonment rate

is less, so I would say give someone a very simple prescription, like 30

grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up, and that could take theform of a few hard boiled eggs and spinach, a few hard boiled eggs and

lentils, it could be scrambled, certainly, or you could simply have them

consume 30grams of unflavored whey protein with cold water. I think thatin the world of behavioral change, simple works.

Avi: I remember you saying that access to rich experiences doesnt


7/9

have to cost a lot of money. Can you expand on that?

Tim:The perception islet me first take a step back: Most people have anumber, a fairly arbitrary number, usually influenced by their peer group,

which isa financial target, typically an amount of money in liquid assetslike a checking account. So that could be once I have a million dollars, Iwont have to worry about anything. Once I have five million dollars, I

wont have to worry about anything. Once I make 250,000dollars a year,I wont have to worry about anything.

That number is typically arrived at with no calculation of what their ideal

lifestyle actually costs and the question I like to pose is if you had 20

million dollars, 50 million, 100million in the bank, after the first month ortwo of going crazy of buying all the toys and doing all the ridiculous girls

gone wild stuff, what would you actually spend your time on a daily basis,

monthly, weekly, and what would you like to do and what would you like tohave? And then you can sit down and cost those things out and for most

people it very seldom costs more than, lets say, 150,000 dollars a year.

[Here is an ideal lifestylecalculatorto test this for yourself.]And what we find is even to privately charter a private airplane in

Patagonia, which I did or in my particular case also in the wine county in

Argentina, it cost me, I think it was, less than 300 dollars for effectively a

half day and that included gasoline costs, or to live on a private island in

Panama, especially a research island, to go snorkeling and scuba diving

every day, that cost similarly less than 500dollars.And what you find is that the deferred-life plan which is based on

retirement and redeeming these experiences, that are most valuable in

your peak physical years, is a false paradigm. Its a very Faustian bargain

and bad bet. So when I say that having incredible experiences, once in a

lifetime experiences, is generally less expensive than people think, it

simply results from sitting down and costing those out. So if you want anAston Martin DB9, there are definitely ways you can do that for 1,500

dollars a month, even if you purchase. And topostpone all of these bucketlist experiences until 50, 60years old or beyond is, I think, a very badwager.

Avi: So that kind of leads me to the other question I have, which is

about college or MBAs. Is college a scam in terms of lost opportunity

cost or investment? If youd rather invest the money, like 40,000 a

year, with the added advantage of not being in debt?


8/9

Tim:So Im going to leave aside the debt question, as that s a verypersonal question. I have different views of, lets say, a liberal arts

undergraduate degree versus an MBA. I dont think the objective of a

liberal arts education is to train you for a single profession. I view the value

of a liberal arts education as making you a well rounded human being, and

to that extent I think its a very worthwhile investment. The real world

doesnt go away once you enter it, so I dont see any particular rush in

jumping into income generation if you have the option of cultivating yourself

through a good liberal arts program. I don t regret having gone to college at

all and I would recommend it to most people who can afford it or find a way

to afford it, even if that puts them into debt for limited amount of time.

When you start looking at professional programs like law school or MBAs,

then I have a less favorable opinion simply because theyre so specific,

and theyre designed to train you for a specific career path. If youre not

confident that is your career path, I view it as a huge opportunity cost and

financial burden.

But if your goal is to reach the pinnacle of success in investment banking

or management consulting, where an MBA is effectively a prerequisite to

have certain job titles, then that is a good investment of your time, if that is

your chosen path. It requires being very honest with yourself about your

motives. So if youre going to business school, as I would say at least halfof the students do, because they want a two-year vacation, an excuse to

party and decompress that looks good on the resume, thats fine, but dont

fool yourself into thinking that thats the best way to gain practical business

experiences, which it is not.

I would much prefer to take someone whos interested in becoming a

competent deal maker or business development icon and put them into a

start up of, lets say 15 to 50 people, in a position where they can work

directly with the CEO or one of the top deal makers or negotiators in thecompany like a VP of Business Dev. or a VP of Sales.

An MBA buffers your decision making from the consequences of the real

world. Its fantastic if you can sit down in a Harvard case study and

determine what the best decision is for a company that you have no vested

interest in. Its quite a different story when youre sitting across the table

from someone who has 20 years more experience negotiating than you do

and you have millions of dollars at stake that will personally affect you and

affect everyone at your company. Theoretically, you might understand

what to do, but you need practice in the trenches to be able to respond


9/9

properly in those circumstances or youll fuck it up.

Avi: What would be advice to a smart kid in high school today?Tim:Iwould say choose your friends wisely. You are the average of the five

people you spend the most time with. Choose your peer group wisely and

if you cant find the type of mentors that youre looking for in person, findthem through books and dont be biased towards the latest and greatest. I

think that you can certainly learn just as much, if not more, from Seneca

and Benjamin Franklinby just reading their writings, as you can from thehot CEO of the moment.

In closing, and to that point, here are just a few of my favorite passages

from Letter XVIII from Letters from a Stoic:

For more, grab the hardcopy or Kindle above, or you can find the entire

public domain version ofLetters from a Stoichere. It might just changeyour life.

how to use philosophy as a personal operating system

Documents