YouSaid · the spoken record

Joshua Waitzkin

lines on the record
73
first
2014-04-18
most recent
2014-04-18
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

  1. “And that's what I see consistently with people who have found the most pleasure, the most happiness, and created the greatest art is that they have a profound passion for what they do, not only the big moments, but the little moments, the moments that others would call pain. They learn to love practice. They learn to love the point of resistance. I said, don't forget about the love. I guess that's what I'd like to say.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “And so what I would say is, for one thing, listen deeply internally to the core of your being and build your game plan from there. Trust your gut and then build the lifestyle around listening to that and cultivate the love. And that's the other thing I'd say, is that whether you're talking about the beginning of the learning process or the very final surge or surges, it's about the love. Think about parenting, cultivating resilience, cultivating excellence, cultivating creativity. What the army professors all forget about is the love.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “If we spend our life in the trenches and we spend our life studying that last like zero point one percent of the learning process, what we see is that final passage to excellence is really about navigating that razor's edge where you have to be willing to go right up against a potential enormous blunder. You have to improvise, for example, trust your intuition in moments where all the objective mathematical faculties you've developed are telling you something else, but your intuition is operating at a higher level. You have to really be willing to go up to the brink of disaster to succeed in moments where you're, for example, fighting in the finals of a world championship or in the very last seconds of a Super Bowl or an NBA finals. And in navigating these things, the armchair professors will often have the exact opposite of good advice. Right.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “When we study excellence and we're thinking about our own path to excellence, that we're studying and we're tuning into the direct experience of people who have actually been there as opposed to the armshare professors who are talking about it.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “No, I love this. It's been really interesting. I guess if I'm going to close with a thought, it would be... One thing that I've been doing in the last years since writing the Art of Learning is I've been exposed to some of the most brilliant thinkers in these different fields. And I've studied the patterns behind them and I've studied the people who study them. And one of the things we have to be wary of in life is studying the people who study the artist as opposed to the artists themselves. Persig, who the author of Zem, the art of motorcycle maintenance that I mentioned, he uses this great term, the philosophers and the philosophologists. The philosophologists are the ones who are basically philosophizing about the philosophers as opposed to doing philosophy. And the vast majority of philosophers today actually are just philosophologists. Similarly, you and I have discussed there's the writers and there's a literate critic. There's the artists and the art critic. And I think that we have to be very careful.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “She has given me the most. Deep advice in my life. I mean, my mom is the one person who has really embraced these crazy decisions that I've made when I've left arts when I was at the tops of their fields because of some strange colon I hadn't sat. I think my mom would have to be the top of any list like that. She's my hero. My mom's the greatest person I've ever known in my life.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “I don't know. And Tim, of course, you, man, I mean, you give me so much crap in life that I'd have to call you because you'd be the one just to definitely be the one to slice through all the nonsense. Yeah. And my mom, that's the most important one my mom.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “For it, yeah. I mean, I think about Gandhi, Laoza, the Buddha. My God, what a but you see there's a certain, yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know if I could answer this question very intelligently. That's the perfect way to...”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Well, one person who would be on that committee is someone who I know a very deep friend of mine who happens to be in the finance world. His name is Dave. I can't speak about his last name. Just a deeply meditative spirit, great wisdom. As insightful human beings have ever known in my life. And I think that he would definitely be on that list. I mean, can we go into, can I say outrageous characters like Gandhi?”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “I love it. I love it. Just sort of as taps that movement away from self. As a competitor, you're constantly fighting. In many ways there's something about there's a focus inward oneself. And becoming apparent, I've definitely felt this movement away from that. I mean, my son is just, my love for him just so transcends anything I ever felt before. It's been really, really important to experience. When you become a dad, man, then we're going to have some fun. I can't wait. I look forward to your sleepless nights. Oh,”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Yeah, dude, let's plan on this. Let's say four or five. We have to figure out when it's going to be. Maybe four or five years will team up and we'll take the world best storm. That's a great plan.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Everything, taking everything I've been doing in these different laboratories and apply it to a world changing education initiative, helping children in a just Fulfill themselves in a very deep way, I think is a central calling. I'm not going to say it's my end game, but that's the next major chapter, I think, of my life that I'm building towards. I've been running my foundation for many years now, and we do beautiful work, but I have an allergy to scale if it's going to dilute quality in any way. And so I've been sort of building up the...”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “When I grew up, I wanted to, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. I loved, so there was something about sport. So I think that there was a, I mean, and I spent a lot of my life as a competitor from age, basically six until 35. I was basically a professional competitor in different fields. Today, but my mom always said to me that she felt like that was a phase and that I was a healer. That was holy language. And a lot of what I do today is Try to figure out how to help people express themselves in as pure way as possible, artistically. In a way that gives them joy. I think that my plan is sometime in the next four or five years, I'm 37 now. I'm thinking about it when I'm 40, 41. I guess that'll be three, four years now. I'm getting old to turn my mind to...”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “Yeah, and then end up being it had been seconds from being an updraft and blowing the whole building up. Yeah, so I wouldn't do that. Honestly, when you ask me that question now, if I think that my family was safe, I have nothing material that I would grab.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “That's a really great question. I actually had that experience years ago when I was playing chess and speaks to how crazy I was. I was studying chess with this brilliant Russian grandmaster named Yuri Razaviev, who actually wrote about my book. And there was a, I was in the fifth floor of a walk-up. There's an old one bedroom I had in my first apartment. And we were deep, deep into chest study, and there was a huge fire. And I looked out, they were like five fire engines and dudes screaming at us. And we had to go out to fire escape. And I ended up going back in and grabbing my computer with all of my chests in the office, which is just a random thing to do. It was so unimportant. It speaks to how different I've become.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “I mean, if someone wants to get to know Hemingway, it's just a fantastic compilation of all of Hemingway's writing in letters, in his books, in his articles, everywhere, put together thematically, basically Hemingway on the writing process. I think it's one of the most important little collections of on creativity that I've ever run into. Absolutely brilliant book.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “I mean, I think that for whom the Bell Tols, just exquisite novel, Greenhills of Africa, amazing. His short stories are utterly magnificent. I think Greenhills of Africa is one of the most underrated books that he's written. his complete collection of short stories. I mean, there's one magnificent gem after the next. Of course Old Man of the Sea is one everyone speaks about and it's a beautiful book. I guess if I had to have a favorite, it would be for whom the Bell”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “But to me, that was just he lived like a deeply secluded life. But they somehow managed to get him a copy of the book he got in a big bushel from his publisher and he read it and he contacted me and wrote, I mean, I was so honored that he was moved by it. And he and I, over the years, have developed really interesting dialogue. motorcycle maintenance is one I think one of the most important books in the world the focus on quality, dynamic quality, finding art in learning to find art in anything. Deeply, deeply brilliant philosophical book. Shantaram, one of the most beautiful novels I've ever read. Gregory David Roberts, also someone I've gotten to know very well, just an ecstatically beautiful, beautiful book. And, you know, of course, I'm also a lover of fiction. Hemingway has been is probably the most important writer of my life.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “I mean, so if we go back to when I was 17, 18, Jack Kerowac had a huge impact in my life on the road, Dharmabums. This was just these are the books were what initially kind of tapped me into the idea that life could be ecstatically beautiful. And I moved into studying Taoism, so Lao Tzu, the Tao Dejing, hugely, just unbelievably deep. But of course, the translation of that book that you read will be formative. And my favorite translation is the Gia Fu Feng and Jain English translation of the Da Dijing. Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I think one of the most important books ever written by Robert Persig, who has become a”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “And I also have built a career around my business as working with people who are similar, who are not seeking a limelight, who are not out there on television every day, who are world class but are no one around them other than people very close have any idea that they have been so incredibly successful from a monetary way. They try to raise their kids not to be spoiled. The kids are gritty kids. They're great philanthropists, really good people. I love, I'm very drawn to people who have been enormously successful, but don't get caught up in the external crap that comes with success and are real who are living their life tapped into the love. And that's how I try to live.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “You have a way of doing that to me. But in a beautiful way. And I mean, I found that the privacy of my life. Not doing things, not getting caught up in the swirl of fame or seeking external adulation is a very important thing for me personally. Everyone's different. But for me, Maybe I have a little bit of an oversensitivity to this because of my youth, because I was out there so intensely as a young guy. And I think it really challenged my love for the game This is an example of the kind of decision that I'll make. I mean, I think it's very important for me to live the vast majority of my life privately. I don't do very much that will allow me to be recognized on the street and live my life as a celebrity. Because I've gone down that path and I love my privacy.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “And that tension that fight, that fight to stay true to my art talk me some very deep lessons. And then after I finished high school, I took off and I left the country largely to study chess very deeply, undistracted from publicity. I moved to Eastern Europe. My girlfriend at the time was from Slovenia. No one knew me out there. And it was a beautiful life. I just left the public world. And since then, when I came back, I've had these periods where I've been exposed to publicity and I've been periods where I've been deep in a cave and moved away from it. And I think this is a very clean example of... I mean, other than you, very few people drag me out of the public eye.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “I mean, for me, a very clear example is my public life. So I was a young kid, fell in love with chess when my first national championship when I was late eight, early nine, a book came out searching for Boy Fisher. And then when I was 15, a movie came out about my life based on the same book that my dad initially wrote. And so I was really thrust into the spotlight. And so I, you know, without me wanting to, I was just a young passionate artist. I love playing chess and competing in chess. I was put out there and I had paparazzi following me everywhere. I was really living in the spotlight in a way I wasn't necessarily emotionally prepared for. And I felt in my teens how that challenged my love for this art because my love for it was so pure initially.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “And so for me, my lifestyle is based on I'm working out every day, I just focus on structuring it that will allow for my creative process to be rich. I'm present with my son. I have my office is at home. I'm with him in the morning. I'm with him. I see him throughout the day. I'm with him. I give him his bath and freedom his story night. I'm with him. I've eliminated almost all travel that takes me away from my boy. I'm going to a conference this weekend. I'm taking my wife and my baby are coming with me. And I really build a life around being true. And I don't build it around anything material. And that's really the essence of how I personally relate to this question. Of course, there's different solutions for everybody, but that works for me.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “was true to myself, these things would follow. And so my professional life, my foundation, my school I only work with people who I feel are ethically aligned, who have a good energy, who I feel really good about intuitively. I keep empty space in my life. I rarely have more than one or two meetings a day. My life is about quality and not quantity. It's about depth and not breadth. My business is based on doing very, very deep and very excellent work with just a handful of people. And so I really like to cultivate quality as a way of life. And I believe that when you're not cultivating quality, you're essentially cultivating sloppiness. The idea of building the musculature of quality and being like a heat-seeking missile for me. I take great pleasure in observing the beauty of the little moments in life.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “I've built a lifestyle around being true to myself, largely, maybe a big reason is because of my mom used to always tell me as a kid to follow my heart, follow my dreams. I never made decisions for money or for external things. And I always trusted if I...”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “One of the great things about you and I being dear friends and having these conversations is that you tend to be very good at thinking in bullets and lists of three things. I just don't know how my brain works, and I can tell you the essence of how I relate to that question. So I'm not going to give you a three-bullet answer because that's just not how this brain operates.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “My routine is that I roll out of bed, I brush my teeth, I go downstairs, and I sit down with my journal, and I start writing, and I immediately apply myself to a reflection that I'd sort of targeted my mind at in the evening or late afternoon before. And then after, and I just let it rip, I have a big creative search. And then once I hear my son, I go get him. Then I have my breakfast, usually a little oatmeal while he has his, you know, after he has his milk, and then I have a cup of coffee about half an hour after that.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “Yeah, I wake up about half an hour before him. I do a big creative burst. As a parent, your sleep patterns change pretty dramatically. But I found this rhythm where I wake up and I do that burst and I just love that first morning energy time with him. And we have this deep connection while he's having his own. Him”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “My favorite time of day is holding my son in my arms after I've done my, I've woken up within a 20, 30 minute journaling session, I get my son and I bring him downstairs and I give him his bottle of milk and I hold him and I look him in the eye and I tell him how proud I am of him. And we talk about what he's thinking about and what he's working on while he has his milk. And I think it's the most magical part of my day these days.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “I love that image of you as a 12 year old racing into the kitchen, bringing up the water. It's such a great metaphor for your life. You find different examples of that this in the process and you race in there and you get the water and you slice right through them.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “And when you observe world class performers, what they've learned how to do is harness fear, nerves, anxiety, bring them in, embrace them, have a working relationship with them and channel them into intensity. And meditation is an incredible forum or vehicle which you can do this because you learn to observe where you have addictive relationships and you realize that they're not absolute and you can actually transform your relationship to any of these thought patterns, thought constructs, cognitive biases, or emotional patterns.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  33. “Change your relationship to pain or the rain or a huge storm or fear or anger. So for example, people from the outside will use the term fearlessness, right? But if you speak to any great soldier or sealed team member or fighter or UFC guy, they'll tell you Mixed Martial Arts, right? Great world class fighter. They'll tell you that they feel fear. They just know how to sit with their fear and how to work with it and how to channel it. So the idea of fearlessness is sort of”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  34. “GRIT, yeah, which is, of course, core educational principle in a lot of charter schools these days is hugely important, teaching kids to be resilient. And it's very interesting because when I hear people speak about resilience from, and this is sort of a, we're moving a little bit aside from meditation, but we'll bring it back, the focus is on, for example, overcoming difficulty, suffering, learning to basically push through. What people don't realize is that world-class performers, what they've done is they've reoriented their relationship to suffering to the point of resistance. They've learned to embrace it. They've learned to see the beauty in these moments where there's pain, because that's incredible room for growth. And I think that a lot of what you learn to do in meditation is observe the addictive way you might be defining something. And if you want to, you can simply alter that definition. So you can...”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  35. “Because I relate to the theme of channeling emotion or fear, whatever is rising as a world class competitor in very much the same way we might speak about meditation. I spoke at a conference on grit recently, and it was very interesting for me because for the most part, when I listened...”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  36. “To do is to embrace the fact that meditation isn't about perfection. It's about the return to breath. So when you find your mind racing, you observe that and you return to your breath. That's a tough emotional hurdle for a lot of guys. And it's very interesting because over time, you know the metaphor of basically the mind is a wild stallion that over time you're taming and you ultimately learn to steal it. It's racing, it's bucking, it's pulling against anything. any kind of line you put on it But ultimately the circles get smaller and smaller and you learn to observe when your mind is getting caught up in some kind of mental or emotional addiction more and more quickly and fluidly and the return to breath becomes easier and easier and it's very interesting by the way as a competitor”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  37. “And so I spent many years meditating four or five, six hours a day with Tai Chi. Today, I combine my Tai Chi practice with sitting meditation again. I mean, most people, when they enter meditation, what I suggest is they just practice very simple sitting meditation following their breath. And it's a practice which doesn't have to be very complex. They can, for example, just sit either cross-legged or comfortably in a chair and follow their breath. And it's very interesting because they'll notice after one or two seconds that their mind starts racing off. And usually what happens when you have really driven guys who are trying to meditate for the first time and their mind races off, they get all pissed off. They're just like, angry, frustration. They feel like they're failing at meditation. And one of the most important things...”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  38. “Yeah, I mean, when I was 17, 18, I started studying very simple contemplative and quiescent Buddhist sitting meditation, where I would focus on my breath This is when I was a late teenager. And then I started getting involved with Tai Chi. And I started studying East Asian philosophy very deeply. And this is where I got increasingly into moving meditation, which is the most deep practice or the practice that I've personally done most deeply, Tai Chi for meditation. So the meditative form of Tai Chi is sort of the essence of the art and then the fighting application is what I was competing in.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  39. “Time at the end of the workday. The problem with doing these things right before bed is that then you're sort of consciously going to bed thinking about these things. At that point, I find you want to release a very core idea is when you go home as best you can, unless you're red hot inspired, release your mind from the work. It's very important to give stress and recovery, core habit, right? You want to be turning it on and turning it off. And teaching people to turning it off is huge. So those are some of the core themes and habits that I would bring up first. But I could go on three hours talking about this subject.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  40. “Opens up for one thing, you're internalizing quality overnight. And we're nurturing themes as well as skills, right? It's one thing to learn skills, but the hierarchy is to learn themes or meta themes that will ultimately spontaneously up into the internalization of hundreds of what I would call local habits. And so if you're practicing quality, you're deepening the muscle of quality. And you're also focusing the unconscious mind on an area of complexity, which you'll then tap first thing in the morning. So this is a core habit. Journaling. certain post mortem processes reflecting on the ending your day with a reflection of the quality of the work. What are the core areas of complexity that you're wrestling with? Hugely important.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  41. “When I first skied with him, Josh, what do you think of the three most important turns of the ski run? And I've asked that question to a lot of people since. And most people will say the middle because it's the hardest, the beginnings, because they're getting momentum. Billy describes the three most important turns of the ski run of the last three before you got in the lift. And it's a very, very subtle point. And for those of you who are skiers, you know that that's when the slope is leveled off. There's less challenged. Most people are very sloppy. Then they're taking the muscles off of the muscles they've been using. They have bad form. Problem with that is that on the lift right up, unconsciously, you're internalizing a bad body mechanics. As Billy points out, if your last three turns are precise, then what you're internalizing the lift right up is precision. So I carry this on to the guys who I train in the finance world, for example, ending the workday with very high quality.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  42. “are spent in an emotional swirl, which is a reactive one. And having a relationship's presence, which allows you to see through the illusion of that emotional swirl or of those mental addictions. I mean, meditation is an incredibly powerful tool, as I know you know quite deeply. I've been meditating since I was 17, 18 years old. I know it's a big part of your life as well, Tim. So that's a very, very important habit. The idea of waking up first in the morning and turning your mind to creative work pre-input as opposed to checking email and getting reactive, opening up your channel to the unconscious mind first thing when you wake up in the morning doing the same ending the workday with quality hugely important. I remember when I went skiing with Billy Kidd who, you might recall, was one of the great Danell racers from back in, I think, the 60s Olympic ski team. Awesome dude. Now he's out in Colorado wearing a cowboy hat, just a timeless guy, brilliant dude. And he was saying to me years ago,”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  43. “Well, let me add you that by describing some of the maybe the Keystone habits that I recommend for people to internalize in the field. Is that a good purchase? I mean, first of all, meditation. I mean, we're speaking about this theme of cognitive biases or basically observing your mental addictions the moment that they set in. Meditation is as deep and as powerful a tool as I could possibly describe. I mean, and maybe six or seven years ago when I was first talking about meditation with guys in the finance world, it seemed like some woo-woo strange thing for them to take on. But as more and more people are integrating into their process, I mean, you wouldn't believe how many of the most powerful players in the world are meditating very deeply. It's just an amazing way of deepening the creative process, deepening presence, expanding your energetic relationship to the world, gaining insight, and realizing that most of the thinking that we do basically springs from mental addiction. And much of people's lives”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  44. “And you find the way to learn, to take a very straight path to learning as opposed to people getting mired in all sorts of tangled webs of complexity, which are essentially caused by cognitive biases. Isn't that how you'd put it?”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  45. “So that's a very simple example of a cognitive bias. A mental addiction, a thought construct, something that we hold to be true because of some complicated twist in our mind that it's no longer actually true. And so of course a very simple antidote to most of this is presence. If we can look at a moment or chest position or an investment decision or any decision with very clean presence outside of kind of emotional inertia, then we can often slice through just amazing amounts of fat with just very, very simple decisions. If you think about the learning process, for example, this is one of the things I love about your approach to learning a language that you and I use is, I call you a master of deconstruction. You look at the way people approach different sports and you find the biases, the false constructs.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  46. “That I'm going to be reaching too far. And then I'm going to be rejecting things I should accept, which will make my position slip more and more and more. And you fall into what I call a downward spiral. So this relates to a lack of presence, which really connects to a cognitive bias, an addiction to a past evaluation as opposed to a present one.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  47. “Exactly. So this is in the financial group or in the world talking about this will be some cost policy. But this is very interesting, for example, a chess player who makes a certain decision. And there's a certain emotional and intellectual and time component to the value we put into the thought process behind that decision. And what we often have to do is release it because the position changes shape. A very interesting way that this manifests in chess, which you can think about rather universally, is let's say that there's a certain evaluation to the position. You and I are playing Tim, and I have a slight advantage in the position, and I'm nurturing that advantage. I'm nurturing it. I'm nurturing it. In a lot of complexity, I make a slight error, and suddenly the position is equalized, right? So if I'm holding on to the past evaluation emotionally, where I had the advantage, then what I'm going to do very subtly is I'm going to reject positions that don't give me that advantage. But if objectively I no longer have an advantage,”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  48. “Well, there are a lot of cognitive biases that are specific to certain disciplines like chess or finance or philosophy. But if we just think about it in terms of everyday life, let's say we make a decision. And we then feel the need to justify that decision. And so we make more decisions to justify that Mitchell's decision. And then we basically get ourself into this deep wormhole, which is caused by the attempt to justify”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  49. “Run financial groups of $20 to $30 billion, for example, if they have a huge insight, that can have unbelievable value. And so if you can really train people to get systematic about nurturing their creative process, it's unbelievable what can happen. And most of that work Relates to getting out of your own way at a very high level. It's unlearning. It's the constant practice which is attraction, reducing friction.”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  50. “So, not doing everything he had to do, which most people do, because they feel the sense of guilt if they're not working. You and I have discussed this at length, but leaving something left to right and then waking up, and then second principle, release your mind from it. Don't think about it all night. Really let go. Have a glass of wine. Then wake up first thing in the morning and reapply your mind to it. And it's amazing because you basically feeding the mind complexity and then tapping that complexity or tapping what you've done with it. And I mean, this rhythm, the large variation of it is overnight, then you can do microbursts of it throughout the day before workouts, pose a question, do a workout, release your mind after workout, return to it, and do a creative burst before you go to the bathroom, before you go to lunch, before anything. And there's ways of systematically training yourself to generate the crystallization experience, the aha moment, that can happen once a month or once a year. A lot of what I do is work on systems to help it happen once a day or four times a day. And when you're talking about guys who”

    2014-04-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Episode 2: Joshua Waitzkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT