YouSaid · the spoken record

Arthur Brooks

lines on the record: 137
first: 2025-12-23
most recent: 2025-12-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Like a way to make yourself unhappy. Yeah, I know. I'm hunted. Doing that, if I sit down and write it, the kicker is always going to be worse than the lead.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To begin with, you need to know what you're going to do the next day, the day before. You need to make a list of the things you're going to do in priority order. And the priority order is not what you like the most, but what actually requires the most concentration and creativity. So the thing that you need to hit immediately, which will be the last 10% of that page you were writing. That's a really good protocol to procrastinate that last 10% because you're most creative, most productive, your best quality stuff is first. And so you want to leave the last to be the first the next day. And that way you've got consistent creativity. If I'm running a column, I'm on deadline every single week for a column. And it's 1,200 words a week of science about human happiness.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then I can sit down to write. If I'm at home, then I sit down to write. And there's no distractions. I mean, there's no meetings, there's no Zoom. I mean, if the president of the United States or the Pope calls, there will be a morning meeting, but that's kind of it, you know, and I've got a very quiet place. I'm not looking at email. I'm not, you know, answering text messages. I'm not looking for, I'm not reading the Wall Street Journal. And to do this with when I set myself up this way, I get four hours of productivity. And that's very unusual. If you're doing things the old fashioned way, you know, you're getting up when the sun is warm and you have a nice big.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The way to do that for me is to say at 200 grams of protein a day. So to keep moderate calories and 200 grams of protein a day, and then I can keep my body fat where I want it, where I feel really good, and I'm never hungry. And that's the way to do it. It's a really protein-rich diet. And of course, now popular culture is catching up with what we've known scientifically for a pretty long time.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm completely persuaded by the research. And over the years, I've experimented a lot with that in my diet, just in the protocols of my eating. And what I found over the past five years in particular is that I'm most comfortable because I'm naturally genetically really lean. I'm most comfortable when I'm sub 10 body fat. And the way for me to do that.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That would be better for me, to be sure. The fat bothers my stomach. So I just, I don't like it. It fills me up too much. It's hard to get to 65 grams of protein when you've got that much fat in the yogurt because you're just going to be just falling asleep. I only do that because it's uncomfortable to have the fat.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there's these papers that were coming out five years ago saying that they're not only ineffective, they're bad for you, that's all been overtaken by events. And the newer research actually says it has neurocognitive protective benefits. Take your multivitamins. And there are a lot of ways to do it. Sometimes I'll take a good multivitamin in the morning. Sometimes I wait later in the day and take AG1. But you need a good multivitamin. Almost everybody does.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, got it. Yeah, then I make my first nutrition of the day. And the first nutrition of the day is 60 to 70 grams of protein. And protein is really important, especially with a tryptophan-rich source of protein for mood management. I'm not eating a turkey leg. I'm not Henry VIII. It's mostly whey protein powder mixed in with non-fat, unflavored Greek yogurt, which is great. And there's so many. I mean, it's like any more. I just read that the fastest growing foods in America today are cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, and whey protein powder, which is extraordinary, extraordinary when you think about it. You and I got to this much earlier back when it was harder to find Greek yogurt and up with a little artificial sweetener in it because I'm not afraid of artificial sweetener. And I get more micronutrients in it with putting walnuts and blueberries and, you know, things that actually give me the micronutrients that I need. By the way, I've also taken a multivitamin at this point. I take a multivitamin every day. I've been taking a multivitamin for decade after decade after decade.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Half an hour to 45 minutes to drink. I know. Well, part of it is I've got this grizzled adrenal system. This is my HPA axis is like a building falling down at this point. So it's going to have to have”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I like him better because I grew up on the north side of Queen Anne Hill in Seattle when there was one Starbucks. And so I've been doing that since I was in eighth grade.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then Pretty soon all nicotine all the time. And caffeine is highly addictive as well. But as a psychostimulant, it's better studied. It's much, much easier to self-manage. You know, I get usually about 380 milligrams of caffeine.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, I know. Yes, that. So it's vacuuming the dopamine, the prefrontal cortex, what ADHD drugs do is that they keep more dopamine in the synapse, especially in the prefrontal cortex such that you can focus. You have more concentration and you have more creativity. And caffeine is great for this. A lot of people like nicotine. I don't like nicotine only because I was hopelessly addicted to cigarettes early on in my life, all the way through my 20s. I was a smoker. I blew it.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is important. I don't take any caffeine to wake up. Huberman's right on this. This is very contested in literature about A2A adenosine and how caffeine blocks adenosine receptors. But I really believe, and Hebrewman believes this, but I find this the most compelling explanation. And it absolutely works for me. I don't use caffeine to wake up. I use caffeine to focus because what I want is I actually want circulating adenosine to metabolize into clear endogenously and I want lots and lots of clarity, plenty of open parking spots for the adenosine receptors that I can then fill two to three hours after I wake up with caffeine. This is just medaffinol.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, in the south of us. The first five is for muscle protein synthesis or volumization of muscles, which is really good for your workout. The other is for this just exploding area of research on the biological benefits of it, the neurobiological benefits of it. And for me, that's really, really important because I'm a crummy sleeper. It's also really good because I'm trying to bank neurologically four hours of is mostly creativity. I have to set myself up for optimal creativity. And that's one of the best ways to do it. That's the best supplement that I've been able to find that affects my creativity later on in the morning. So I'm adding that to my pre-workout drink, taking no caffeine.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After the holy half hour. Now, I've taken no nutrition except for salty water with some high dose. I take high dose creatine monohydrate with my workout drink.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Basically, the equivalent of a freaked out hippie who went to India and got converted and practiced an exotic religion for the rest of my life. But my exotic religion is Catholicism.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Daily Mass is half an hour. You know, Sunday mass is an hour. Daily mass is happening. During the week, after 30 minutes, no souls are saved. According to science, no. So we do that, and that's a period of prayer inflection. Some people prefer vipasana meditation. Our friend Brian Holiday does a lot with actually studying historic philosophers, but you need what the ancients would call the holy hour. And they would be a full hour. For me, it's the holy half hour. And that really works. And it's really good for my relationship and it's very good for this incredibly good for focus and concentration.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get cleaned up, then I go to mass. I'm a Catholic, I go to Mass every day. And that's the experience of transcendence, which my path is not the only path. Everybody's got to go to mass. That's not going to be effective because that's not for everybody. There is a period of reflection and transcendence that's very, very important for not just mood management, for productivity that's going to follow. And there's a lot of neuroscience behind why that is effective. But for me, it's also an opportunity because my wife gets up at six. And when I'm home, I'm home about half the time. I'm on tour, about half the time I'm home. I'm home every week. So I don't go on tour for months at a time. I go on tour for days at a time, which means that I've always got a flight home and that's inconvenient. But that's actually a part of my life protocols is making sure I spend every single weekend at home. I'm out maybe four weekends a year. And so that means I have lots of days at home. I have at least three or four mornings at home. And we start the day at 6.30 minutes.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's exactly right. Zone three, you're too out of breath. Have a normal conversation. Zone four, you're gasping for. Zone one is just, you're just strolling is kind of what it comes down to. And your heart rate to be in the zone two is usually around 120 beats per minute. And I'll also do some periods of some intervals in that I'll do two or three intervals during a half hour zone two cardio sessions. So I'll take it up to 160 beats per minute for a full minute to bring it back. I'll do some of that hit training while I'm doing it. But 120 beats per minute is a really, really easy thing to ascertain because it's, I'm an old musician. That's the speed of a SUSA March.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just the talk test is just keeping it as simple as possible. Tend to go insane if I'm overmeasured. And so that's one of the reasons I use very, very simple biometrics and very simple health models. I'm going to need to move up to something better at some point. But if I get too much data, I'm in trouble.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there are ways, typical ways, that people self manage negative mood that are really, really bad for you, like drugs and alcohol, like internet use, like pornography, horrible negative mood management, workaholism, awful people distract themselves, the amygdala of the brain is what largely manages fear and anger. But the amygdala also manages attention. And so if you can distract yourself with something you can count on, like your work, but you're effectively doing is you're managing your anger and fear by redirecting the activity of the Migdal right.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Negative affect is strong, negative manifestation of mood. And obviously, if it's the median, half has to be above that and half has to be below. And I'm way above average in negative affect. I'm above average in positive effect, too. Yeah, I mean, you're a mad scientist, which is typically.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, not dying. No, yeah, things like this. No, it's fantastic. It's really a great way to start the day. And there's a lot of research once again, and this is especially important for mood management. So half of the population is above average in negative affect.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can tell you behaviorally why people do that. I mean, what you want is record of progress because that's one of the great secrets to human happiness. You never arrive. Arrival gives you almost nothing, but a progress toward the goal. And this is a record of Tim's progress going all the way back to 16. It's evidence that you're a better man than when you were 16 years old.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I did, there's a whole lot of things that I keep records of for sure. Just so I understand my own progress in life, making sure I'm not making regress in life. And for some reason, I got into the pattern of writing down every single workout going back, you know, until back to my 30s. And now I'm 61 years old. So that's a lot of date books”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's amazing. So, no, I'm not doing that, but I can tell you, I mean, I've got journals that go back, you know, I write it down. And so I know, you know, what's on what day”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“5 45 in the morning every single day. That's the one thing I can really count on this always going to be good, always going to be good.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it's push pull legs on different days. It's not a pure bro split, but it's near on, yeah, right? Making sure that you're not getting heroic with the amount of weight, you're making sure that you're using dumbbells and not bars because you can get full range of motion. You're super careful about your joints. If you have any pain in your joints, you back off. You do for volume. You do more reps as opposed to more weight. And always be doing it that way and dial it down the actual weight, dialing up the reps as you get older. And these are these basic ideas. So it's push pull legs. And then I'm doing usually somewhere between 20 minutes and 40 minutes of zone docu cardio, which I have an elliptical machine because it's super easy on the joints. And every place, every hotel's got an elliptical machine. I've got a nice elliptical machine at home. And that's what I'm doing. And this is an hour. A lot of the time I'm doing it without headphones. It's important because you need to concentrate. To begin with, that's your most creative time. That's like taking an hour-long shower. You get your best ideas if you work out with that headphones. There's a lot of good neuroscience on that as well. And that's 445 to 50.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's like ropes. So I go to these gyms for 78-year-old guys who are completely shredded. They look like old roosters. And they're working out. And I would say, teach me, teach me, Maestro, you know, the sensei. Teach me what you do. And they would give me this advice. And I followed that advice assiduously. And so what it is is. Old school, push, pull legs, don't use a bar.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wanted to be doing that in my 70s. I wanted to be healthy in my 70s. I wanted to be hanging out with my wife and dandling my 11th grandchild on my knee when I was 78 years old. So what I did was I've always been on tour. I've always traveled constantly all throughout my career. Every city I'd go to, I'd find the oldest iron gym I could find. Why? Because that's where the old dudes train. That's where the shredded guys train. And now I'm the old guy, right? So my wife says that sleeping with me is like holding a leather sack of ropes. I think it's a compliment. I'm not sure, you know, but the married decades to him, decades. But I would go to these. Bet”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because, for instance, like with zone two, it's like I travel a lot Stationary bikes can be a real hassle because of the fitting. But then, all right, maybe you use a treadmill with an incline with a ruck sack or something like that. I'd just love to know this. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm very old school. So my resistance training, actually, I learned the routines that I do. I was in my 30s. I really started lifting when I was in my 30s. And my dad died. I changed a lot of the things in my life. I quit drinking alcohol in my 30s. And I did a lot of things differently than I hadn't done before because I wanted to not have the future that I saw, you know, the windshield of my life. And one of the things”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't want to wake up my grandchildren, but I do, generally speaking, two thirds resistance, one third zone two, but I tailor that to what my day is going to look like. So if I have a sedentary day, I'll do more zone two to start the day. And if I know I'm walking around, I'm walking around campus or whatever I have to do. I know I'm going to be walking seven or ten miles that day. I'll do all resistance. And so that really depends. Or if I'm going on a hike with my wife on Saturday or something. But that's seven days a week. I do an hour in the gym, seven days a week. What would the let's just say prototypical two-thirds resistance, one-third zone two or whatever the ratio might look like as a template? What would that look like? What type of exercises, free weights equipment, kettlebells? What type of zone two do you like?”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've always had a good gym in my house down in the basement of my house. Now, down in the basement of my house is also living. One of my kids and his wife and their two sons. So I have to be real quiet to lift everything. I kept clanking around down there because.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For a lot of different reasons. You try to retrofit your schedule to what you need to do for sure. And that's a long time before Dawn in the winter and not that long before Dawn in the summer. And our listeners in Helsinki are like, what do I do in July? I mean, okay, you know, you have to tailor the routines to what you're doing, but it's very clear that this is good for productivity and very good for happiness. And then the most important thing is what do you do right after that? Yeah, what do you do? I pick up heavy things run around. So the most important room in my house is gym.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Has incredible impacts on productivity, focused concentration, and happiness. If you're getting up when the sun is warm, you've lost the first battle for mood management and productivity is what it comes down to. So my days always start before dawn. Now, I usually set the clock for 4.30 in the morning, which is a lot before dawn. Who knew that Jock O'Willink was such a fan of Vedic traditions? He also wakes up at 4.30. 4.30 is a good time.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hours or when you're most productive, especially in creative stuff. Almost everybody experiences this. And that starts with what you just mentioned, which is called the Brahma Horta. And I studied a lot in India. I go to India every year. I have spiritual teachers, but also I'm very interested in behavioral science in the Vedic tradition. They came to a lot of truths way before Western social science actually came upon this. And one of the ideas was Brahman Mahorta, which in Sanskrit means the creator's time. Now a mahurta is 48 minutes long. So two Mahurtas, the Brahma Mahorta, is an hour and 36 minutes before dawn. And the whole idea, going back thousands of years, is you get up an hour and 36 minutes before dawn and you'll be more creative, more in touch with the divine, more productive, and happier. This was always the contention. So of course, it's been put to the test in modern behavioral science research. And sure enough, we don't know if it's two Majortas is the right number of Mahortos, but the whole point is getting up before dawn.”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do have a very strong and very disciplined morning routine. And I studied love and happiness. So it's not as if I'm going deep into the physiology of actually how I can have the best amount of muscle mass and minimum amount of body fat. I want to have more love and happiness in my life. And it's not easy. So I'm a specialist in human happiness because it's hard for me. You know, that's the first thing. I know everybody who does research on happiness and the psychology behavioral science world, they're doing it for a reason. It's sort of me search more than research. But one of the things that I found is that discipline and an understanding of your own human physiology, the biology and neuroscience is critical for actually becoming a happier person. So I have a morning routine that I dedicate to being both more productive and having higher well-being. So I'm managing mood because high negative affect is a characteristic of my personality. And I also need to be really productive because the more”
2025-12-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #841: Arthur Brooks — Finding The Meaning of Your Life, The Poet's Protocol, The Holy Half-Hour, and Why Your Suffering is Sacred · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT