Tim Ferriss - 5-Bullet Friday — October 21, 2022

Hi All!

Here is your weekly dose of 5-Bullet Friday, a list of what I’m pondering and exploring. Please feel free to forward this along to friends, and don’t miss the P.P.S.

What I’m listening to

“Orchestrated Incident” (YouTube, Spotify) by Gramatik. I wrote a good portion of The 4-Hour Chef (in fact, a book on accelerated learning) to this track on repeat. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I find the upbeat instrumentals fantastic for writing flow. I have a lot of Gramatik and Beats Antique—try “Circulation”—in my playlist for writing sessions.

What I’m wearing for long hikes

​L’eggs Women’s Everyday Knee Highs. OK, OK, hear me out. An old Italian fella, veteran of the Camino de Santiago, shared this gem with a close friend of mine: Skip fancy sock liners and just put these on before your hiking socks. Et voilà! No blisters. So far, it’s worked like a charm.

Book I’m revisiting

​Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck. This was originally given to me by my dear mom, who knows I’ve fantasized for ages about a countrywide road trip with my pooch, Molly. The book was published in 1962, the same year Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work. It’s beautiful and surprisingly hilarious at points. Here is a brief description: “With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way, he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and the unexpected kindness of strangers.”

​​Documentary I’m watching again

​The Price of Everything (YouTube, Apple TV), directed by Nathaniel Kahn. I originally watched this film after both my brother and a close friend raved about it, and I was prompted to rewatch it after Kevin Rose brought it up in the most recent Random Show episode. It is often funny, sometimes nauseating, and always entertaining. Here’s the description: “With unprecedented access to pivotal artists and the white-hot market surrounding them, The Price of Everything dives deep into the contemporary art world, holding a mirror up to our values and our times—where everything can be bought and sold.”

Quote I’m pondering

“If you can’t tell what you desperately need, it’s probably sleep.”​
— Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly)
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You can complement this edition of 5-Bullet Friday with my 37 favorite documentaries and my interviews with master filmmakers Ken Burns and Darren Aronofsky.
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And, as always, please give me feedback on Twitter. Which bullet above is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know. Just send a tweet to @tferriss and put #5BulletFriday at the end so I can find it.
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Have a wonderful weekend, all.
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Much love to you and yours,
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Tim

P.S. Deal of the Week — HEY!

I was introduced to this email platform by my dear friend Kevin Rose, who uses HEY and calls it “a beautiful rethinking of everything wrong with email.”
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​HEY is a fresh approach to email from the makers of Basecamp, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (previous podcast guests and two of the most innovative entrepreneurs I know). For almost two decades, email has remained unchanged, soulless, chaotic, and borderline abusive. Your inbox is packed with emails from people that you don’t care about, full of intrusive trackers, and all framed by a multitude of ads that watch every move you make. If you value privacy and online security and are tired of having an inbox overflowing with things you don’t care about, HEY fixes what’s been broken with email for years. At HEY, emails never land in your “Imbox” by default. You screen senders the first time they email you, filtering out anyone you don’t want to hear from. It also blocks invasive tracking pixels that report back information like when, where, and how often you’re opening your mail.
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​Take back control of your email with a free 14-day trial at HEY.com/Tim. As a 5 Bullet Friday subscriber, you’ll also get an exclusive $20 discount on your first year’s subscription. Check it out: HEY.com/Tim.

P.P.S. Today is the last day to sign up to win a chance to be on the allowlist for “Project 555.”

“Project 555” is the codename for my upcoming art/NFT project. If you’re wondering how my interests in world-building fiction and illustration intersect, this is it. 100% of primary sale proceeds will go to the Saisei Foundation. The Saisei Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit private foundation that funds cutting-edge scientific research, including studies related to psychedelic therapeutics. Click here for more details on Project 555. The link in this paragraph is exclusively for 5-Bullet Friday subscribers. Registration closes today, Friday, Oct 21st, at 11:59 p.m. ET.