049 • How Tim Ferriss builds resilience by diversifying life projects
049 • How Tim Ferriss builds resilience by diversifying life projects
I was scrolling the YouTube subscriptions feed recently and I saw a clip from the upcoming Modern Wisdom podcast episode with Tim Ferriss (I think the full episode is coming tomorrow, not entirely sure though).
In it, Tim was explaining what he does to avoid periods of bad mood. The strategy made a lot of sense and related to another idea that I've heard before, so I wanted to share it with you here...
Tim's strategy, in short, is to have many areas of your life that you base your well-being and self-worth on, rather than just one.
An example...
I do this through growing a business at the same time as studying at university (which is ramping up for summer exams right now). I also highly value time nurturing health as well as relationships with those around me.
The idea behind this is that if you struggle one day on an area you care about making progress in, you can still have a good day overall by trying to bolster one of the others.
For example, if you miss the gym in order to spend time with someone you care about but don't see very often, this is still a valuable use of your time.
If your gym progress is your only guiding purpose for living life, though, this will not satisfy you. You'll be disappointed that you didn't fit your session in that day.
This principle of hedging existential bets ties strongly into an idea I heard from Alex Hormozi, both when he appeared on Chris's show too, and in his own writing. It's about patience, in all of its forms...
Alex's idea is that the best way to be patient is to make progress in another project that you have. I've noticed that this is great if you're working on long-term projects that rely on the effects of consistency and compounding (which many do).
For example, when I'm training in the gym, I don't notice a difference in my appearance and health by the day. Now if the gym was the only thing in my life this would probably break me down and demotivate me.
However, because I have other things going on in my life, I can stop my mind from being overly invested in my gym progress.
This means that I don't get demotivated at the fact there's no visible change from day to day, and I still get to enjoy the moments when I lift a little more or notice some other change that demonstrates the progress I've made over a longer periods.
So diversify a little in what you do...
Have seasons where you change between things, investing in the ones that resonate most at the present moment. But don't invest all your self-worth in a single endeavour at one time. That's a surefire way of ensuring you'll lack resilience if something goes wrong. Build yourself an escape route by caring about outcomes in multiple journeys.
To me, this seems very similar to conventional investing, and although I have next to no investing experience, I can understand diversifying your investments in the stock market of life, so to speak.
See you next week!
What I've written this week...
Why I Built a Personal Website in the Age of Social Media Dominance - Further explaining why I built fundamentalised.com when everyone else is growing their social media accounts.
Quote of the week...
