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M. Sanjayan

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2017-12-07
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2017-12-07
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  1. “Almost never happens. And think what you've just done. You've now lost the second best person to run your organization. You just walked out your door. It almost never happens. So that was something I prepared for, I thought about how I might try to approach it. I went to them and I said, this is a problem. It's a big problem. Tell me what I need to do to be able to do this. And they gave me some of, not all of them, I mean, different people, and you got to pick and, you know, you got to filter that advice. Two individuals I went to gave me incredibly good advice that I followed to a T and it served me well because I think it served me well because both those individuals are incredibly valuable and still part of contribution internationally.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “No, I mean, look, it's not a big surprise. Anytime a founder leaves an organization, so here's a really legitimate answer. So I was not the only internal candidate going for this job. There were two other very, very good candidates for this job as well. And they both could do this job. They both could be CEOs. And my number one task as soon as I knew I was going to get this job was to figure out a way to keep them.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “A donation or to fund conservation intensity when I'm having a drink with them or when I'm like fly fishing with them or going on a hike with them because people don't want to be hit up all the time. I mean like you wanted to just go do that and enjoy it and have fun. And then you want to say, can I meet with you at 3 o'clock tomorrow afternoon or can I meet with you at 8 a.m. tomorrow or today, whatever it is? You want to just clean up, show up and be straight about it.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “I don't think I did by email. I think I did it all by phone or when I met them in person after like the first coffee. So the people I knew well, I did by phone and the people I'll tell you one thing though, I do take it sort of seriously. So when I go to see them, there are two things that I never make informal two things that I never make informal. One is when I talk to my board, my organization board, or my group of mentors board, which means I put on a shirt, I kind of, you know, I put on a jacket if it's appropriate. I just, whatever way you want to do it, and it's not about Dresco, but whatever you want to do it, you want to make sure they understand that you are using and taking their hour really seriously. So just don't waste time on that. The other thing I do, I always take seriously when I ask people for money, something that I never do kind of on the, I'll never ask someone for...”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “I schedule it around travel that I have in this city, so I do this as much as I can in person, unless I have a crisis or an emergency, I just need to get on the phone, and then they're always willing. Like I literally today, I had a little mini crisis. I literally had a CEO of a company. I didn't want to name that, but enormous, enormous, enormous company. And he returned my call today. It's so flawed. It's like, I'm so sorry it took me so long to get back to you. And I'm like, are you kidding me? And he's like, once you get that relationship with that few individuals, it does work. It can really work very well.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “And they all went, great, because guess what? Most times when you're hiring people, and I do this all the time, I hire people all the time, and I'm so amazed that I didn't listen to my own rule. You want someone who gives you the confidence that they will solve the problems that you don't want to deal with. You want someone who coming and say, you know what, I got this. I want someone to come in and say, I don't know if I really want it, convince me, and they start negotiating day one. You don't want to do that. It's a very, very simple rule. So whatever job you go for, start by saying, let me be clear. I really want this job. I will walk through a wall to get this job. Now let me tell you what makes me so great for this and slay it out. You can negotiate later. Really simple”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “Like one guy actually said this to me. He said, That is not the right answer. I want you to repeat after me. Say, I will walk through a wall to get this job. He said, say it. Like, really, say it. I'll walk through. He says, now, when you go into that interview, they're going to ask you this question, and I want you to repeat this. I will walk through. So he did, first question. Why do you want this job? Tell us what prepared you for this job. I said, let me make one thing clear. I will walk through a wall to get this job.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “So, this is such an amazing thing, and I've applied for other jobs before, like kind of like the CEO or top level person job and not got that. Three times in the past I've been rejected for that. Get very close and then somehow either they talk me out of it or I get rejected. Here's what I was doing. So they would ask me, so do you like, tell me about this? So why do you want this job? And I'd be like, well, look, I've got a good career. I don't really need this. But, you know, if it was the right thing, you kind of had this kind of long meandering story about saying, you know, I'm not totally vested. Yeah, I could do this, but I could do lots of other things. And I actually feel that way in a lot of ways, right? So in a lot of ways, I think I'm definitely, I didn't start my life thinking I want to be the CEO of conservation international. There was never a dream, there was never a goal. Never a goal. The goal was much to have impact. I didn't really care how I had impact. But what these guys said to me was...”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “To be the one in waiting. Like, seriously, that's what typically happens. New CEO comes in, they fail, and either the old CEO comes back or the person in waiting kind of gets the role and then runs it. So it's fraught with challenges and dangers all over the place. And I really didn't think I would get it. I thought there was a chance I would get it, but I was really worried about it for lots of reasons, including my color, to be absolutely honest. And these groups of this mentoring group honest to God coached me them and a couple of other people really helped coach me through this.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “No, no, they were all people who had somehow been in my orbit. And then I thought, well, let's just try to make this formal in some way. And let's just see if they would agree to do this. And they all said, yeah, and one or two of them said, yes, so long as you do that to me in return, which was a very nice, flattering thing, I'm sure it doesn't work that way. But that's been very useful. And believe me, I did end up using that board when I went through the CEO search. So 150 days ago, our founder who'd been running Conservation International for 30 years stepped down. And I became the CEO. And last year, the board went through a very challenging process of trying to decide who the next CEO and what the next leadership team would look like. And it's a very scary moment for an organization because over half of the CEOs who come in after found a fail. And actually, if you want to get the job, you want to...”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “PBS. Amazing woman, very unusual. She was a development staff, so she asked people for money and then rose to the ranks and ended up running PBS. Also it's across the road from my office, so it's kind of easy to sometimes see her. Really smart, very thoughtful, wonderfully kind, generous person, a guy named Seth Nyman, Cross Point Venture Partners. It's one of his companies also race car driver. That guy interviews CEOs for a living. So his whole job is about interviewing CEOs and deciding which ones he wants to bet on as a venture capital guy. Really useful for me as I'm thinking about what qualities and attributes I want to strengthen as a CEO. So I sort of looked at it that way as I created this group of folks who could sort of help and guide.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Look, I wanted people I respected, so that was sort of important to me. There had to be people I really sort of respected. I wanted people who were not in my field because I had plenty of colleagues in my field. I wanted people. So I'll just give you some names. I don't think it matters that much. So Tom Tyranny, Bridgepan, he's also the chairman of the Nature Conservancy Now, really smart guy. He kind of gets how businesses should organize. He coached me on how to get the CEO job for Conservation International. And the tips he gave me were incredibly valuable, like incredible. I never realized that you could actually coach your way into a job. And that guy really helped me do that. So that was one.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “And we'll just have a little conversation and a catch up and I can just occasionally ping you for guidance. That has been incredibly, incredibly useful. I picked some great people. You might know some of them, but it's been very, very helpful.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “My board for my organization. They're my personal board. They're great people. And I would just say to them, listen, can you do this for me? I'll meet with you two, maybe three times a week. We'll have coffee or lunch.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “But so that's a good one because it kind of harkens back to tribe or mentor. So one of the things that I did that I found very, very useful in my life, and I think for many of you you could apply it to, is that some years ago I created a personal board. So a group of individuals who would personally spend a little bit of time vesting in me and my success. And I didn't do this because it's some grandiose notion of who I was, but it struck me that whenever you wanted letters of reference, when you go for a job, you always then have to sort of scramble around and try to catch up to people who you haven't spoken to for a long time and hope they'll give you this letter and they really don't know you by that point and life is sort of gone by. And I thought, well, what happens if I had a group of, say, five individuals that I would pick and I would make a promise that I would never solicit them for money, which I've kept up, even though some now do give to CI, but that's not the purpose. They don't belong to my organization.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “Yeah, so I often put the toughest things I need to deal with and the most creative things early in the morning. It's just as simple as that. I tend not to check my email until I'm actually starting work. That's just something my work email until I'm actually starting work. It really clutters the mind. So what happens with email is, especially for my company, because it's a global organization. So I get emails in the middle of the night. And so they pile up. And so if I find out that if I open my day by checking email, I get diverted into all these other small things that I am very bad at saying no to. So I kind of ruin the rest of that day. And rather I sort of want to set my agenda, then look at it and deal with the ones I can deal with and ignore the others.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “By the way, while he's thinking about that, one of the book I want to mention to you guys, especially for this town, is a book called Destiny of the Republic by Candace Millard. It's a fantastic book. She's a great author. And she talks about President Garfield and being shot and how his life could have been saved if they had only listened to the surgeon who gave them the advice, but he was sort of ignored because he was this black surgeon in the Union Army. And instead, they took another route. And it's just a fascinating story about race and technology at the cusp of a really important moment in our nation, but at present that very few people had heard about, but who if he had survived would completely change the course of our country, probably for the better.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “Yeah, and conservation.org. So I think our website and our social media platform is a great place to engage. For a DC audience, but I think also for a global audience.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “Twitter is a good place. Facebook is also really good because it allows longer conversation to sort of occur. So I can easily be found is MSanjen. And so I'm on Facebook, and that's a good place to also engage. I mean, Twitter is fine too.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “So, the most important thing you could do for me or for us or for this cause is to be a messenger. It really is quite simply that because the people who are more likely to listen are people like yourselves. They're more likely to listen that message coming from you than if it came from me. And that's really, so I strongly believe in that, right? So the messenger matters as much as the message. You can reach audiences that I could never reach. So being that messenger to carry that message into your community, into your church or synagogue, your place of worship, your school, your community, your family is far, far more useful than me trying to just get my voice to be bigger and bigger and bigger.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “Look, that's just my, like, I'm stuck. Any help you have and want to throw it my way, Huawei, we'll take it. But I'm actually stuck because I know much better communiques than I am and far smarter people than I am in my field were basically stuck as well.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “Self interest. And the better I can do that and tell you that it's actually going to make your life better now, now, now, now, not even your kids, but your life, the better chance I have of promoting change. The interesting thing is it doesn't have to be rational. Because we do so many things that are completely irrational. And so it doesn't have to be rational. It can be very emotional and it has to be about your own enlightened self-interest. It can't be about the future”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “So I don't know. That's the truth of the answer. I don't know how to fundamentally beat evolutionary biology. It is so hardwired into us. The people who do and do it rationally, so you look at what Charlie Munger says, right? He says, look, basically, our investment technology that he and Buffett use is just don't do anything stupid over the long run. Pretty much. He basically says that, right? It's surprisingly simple, but incredibly hard to follow. Incredibly hard to follow. And the people who do it tend to be sort of investors and others who sort of faithfully follow a system. But even they get spooked, as we've seen many, many times over, right? So it's very difficult to beat it. So I'm not trying to do that. I'm just trying to figure out how I can make you changing your life for the betterment of the planet in your own enlightenment.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “Had that opportunity when the opportunity cost was actually relatively cheap, the price of conservation will never get cheaper in the future. It's as cheap as it's going to get now and it'll only get more expensive. So not acting now is crazy. And that's why people who've done the giving pledge like Steve Case and others, I so applaud that because they're not just saying we're going to leave this, we're going to leave this for future generations to deal with. They're saying we're going to deal with it now because right now is probably the cheapest to be able to deal with it.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “And now we actually have some data. We're the first generation in human history to see the entire Emmet John Glenn before he passed away. Amazing guy, amazing American, first American to go around the planet, see the whole thing. I asked him. And he said, yeah, it blew me away. I never thought we could see the whole planet all at once. Like, if you were standing on a flat Earth, if you're standing on the seashore, you see about seven miles. After that, the horizon dips away. And as long as humans have been around, we've been climbing tall and taller mountains, towers, trees, to be able to see what's over the horizon. What are we looking for? We're thinking about a lion that's over the horizon that might bite us or looking for opportunity. Now, in our generation, we can see the whole thing. And only that, we're also mostly all connected. There is no reason for us not to act right now. And believe me, that window is small. And if we don't do it, I swear future generation will look back and say, what a waste.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “And so we took a bunch of different topics like shipping and did these short videos on. It's called Climate Labs on Vox. So those are sort of things that come quickly to mind. But here's the most important thing. Seriously, I really mean this. We really are on a race to save the planet. I really, really believe this. You know, here's the thing. We're the only generation who actually has some foresight. Like, think about this. In the entire history of humanity, we had to rely on crystal balls and a burning bush, right? Sitting where we are. To give us a glimpse. To give us a glimpse of where we are heading.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “Okay, so without being totally self-serving, so I will say my own organization, conservation.org, decent website, you'll find lots of ways in which you can be engaged. The nature conservancy, nature.org, decent website, lots of ways you can get engaged. Environmental defense fund. They do a lot of great work, particularly in the United States around climate. World Resource Institute gives you the macro picture. great graphics, great infographics, gives you sort of the macro picture. I did a series recently on Vox VOX with the University of California called Climate Labs, which are just these eight-minute, very short, digestible little videos on something like food waste. Slightly reverent, slightly counterintuitive, simple ways in which you can either get engaged or make a change in your life, it can have an impact.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “For the administration. Like all of a sudden, like we're going to overturn the ban so that any hunter who goes to Zimbabwe or Zambia and shoots an elephant can bring the ivory in the head into the country. Like why is that all of a sudden the thing to do? And people really got upset about it. And believe it or not, it kind of did change something, at least for now. There's been a reversal of that decision. So the administration has decided to wait on that for a while.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “And try to get the best pathway there. And I can answer that for you. There's Seafood Watch, the Monor Bay Aquarium puts out, gives you a reasonable pathway. But how you cook and how you waste food, like wasting food, is a big, big deal, like your energy output on those is completely outweighs what car you drive or anything like that, right? So that's just something simple you can do. You know, get engaged in the political system. I think it really does matter. It really does matter, right? So there was this kind of crazy decision very recently on wanting to, at this moment in time, when all these crises are going on on the planet, on overturning the ban, on importing elephant heads from trophy hunting, from Zimbabwe and Zambia. That actually somehow became a priority.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “Is it better to drink out a ceramic cup that you have to wash in hot water or a styrofoam cup? Those are important questions for you to think about, but ultimately they shouldn't stop you from getting engaged. So the truth of the matter is very, very, very few people are actually engaged in trying to care about the fate of our planet, the fate of where we live and our kids' lives. And I just want to get more people in it. And I think if more are in it, then absolutely we'll come up with more honed solutions. But it shouldn't stop you from getting in it. So that's like my first thing I would say. If you want to make some small changes in your life, like what you eat and how you cook it makes a huge difference. Like it's probably the one thing that you could do. So being thoughtful, like whether it's farm court or even that's a useful question to think about.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “Right, so the first thing I would say is don't let perfection and trying to find the silver bullet keep you out of the game. So we were both recently at Summit in Los Angeles. And I heard people talk about philanthropy and giving and wanting to find the most perfect way to give. And I was sort of struck by how many people around me all nodding. And I was just thinking to myself, really, like, yeah, okay, I want to make sure my dollar goes the furthest as well. There's so many other things in life which we waste all the time and why this one we want perfection. So, you know, when someone says to me, like, tell me the one thing I can do to change the planet, like, guess what? There isn't. So there's lots of things and it's messy. You're not always going to get it right.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “So and so deity will do this to you or not do this to you if only you believe and I always thought well why don't we put that same kind of effort into putting billboards up that says nature screaming or nature speaking when are we gonna listen something like that So that's probably what I put on it.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  33. “I'm gonna take an easy one out. I'm gonna use one of the slogans that we at Conservation International use in some ways, which I would probably say something like either people need nature. That's not obvious enough. I'd say nature speaking. I might say nature screaming. And I'd like to put those outside every place where there's like this quote-unquote natural disaster, which is usually human disaster that was exacerbated by just not listening to nature. That's what I do. And I'd always influenced by like you drive across this country, you see these signs for religious purposes, right?”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  34. “I mean, two Navy SEALs drowned in a training exercise in San Diego like two years ago. Just the two of them just trying this out and breaking the rules about the number one thing with this is, which is you're doing it with a buddy who can do this better than you can. And she goes, and you definitely want to do this. And that's why I didn't just try this. I read his book, then I went and got one of the best teachers, and I spent time with her. And that's why I think it's amazing.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  35. “I could hold my breath for like maybe 45 seconds, maybe a minute if I tried. Within three hours, three hours just by doing exercises with me, she had me at two minutes ten seconds. Floored me. It'd be like saying, How fast can you run? I'd be like, okay, I can do like a nine minute mile. And you're saying, well, give me three hours and I'll get you down to like a six minute. You just couldn't do that. And that flawed me. And she's like, Yeah, let's keep going. And like, sure enough, you're doing three minutes. You're doing three minutes within 24 hours. Unbelievable. True story. It can do it. Everyone in here can do that too. That's why that book was so kind of mentally transformative.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  36. “And that book is pretty damn good. It's about free diving, which I knew nothing about. And that was one of my birthday things. That was like two years ago. So I thought I'll try this free diving thing because I read Nestor's book. And it's amazing. The physiology of the human body and what it can do is amazing. So I read this book. It's about free diving, a very scary, very sort of can be a very dangerous sport, but also an amazing sport because it completely changes the way you think about your body and what you're capable of. And I thought, what, right, this book inspired me. I'm going to go try and take a lesson in Freediving. So I went to Hawaii around my birthday, and I took a lesson from a very, very good, you want to do this with someone very, very good. And I did. This woman, Shelly Eisenberg, who's my teacher for the day, you know, basically, look, this is what she did. Within three hours.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  37. “That as you get older, you start appreciating that if no one could do it at 71, maybe I could do it, like, you know, not quite at 71 yet. Another book I really liked, more recent book is Stanley McCrystal's team of teams, completely different reason, just a really clever smart book about how to organize businesses and enterprises for today's world. And he takes his sort of experience from the Army in Afghanistan and brings it over to your life or my life and makes it kind of relevant and meaningful. I found it very influential. I've given away quite a few copies of James Nestor's book, The Deep, which you might have read, right? You've read his book.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  38. “Yeah, Tim and I have talked about this a little bit. So for me, books are all about the moment and the emotion that I'm in and the person I'm giving it to is in. And so I can't tell you that there's one book that has predominated how I give because I love books and I love to give books and I carry books around. And even today I brought two books for you to autograph that I'm giving away, right? So there's an act of giving and a book is a wonderful way to convey something to another person. Books that I've loved giving away, Norman McLean's River Runs Through Italy in so many different ways in so many pieces. It totally influenced my life in terms of fly fishing and finding sort of magic in words and that quiet space. He also wrote that book when he was 71 years old. Kind of really the only big book he wrote. He said 71. And you think about all this bullshit about creative genius being in the young and all.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  39. “When I come home, all I want is just some goddamn respect. Right? That's his song. Never made it big, but Oda's writing was a big singer by then. It's a decent song. Decent blue song. She owned it. She complete, same words, but just the way she put that story together, her complete ownership of it, and who'll forget her spelling of that just makes her the one who remembers it. Later on in life, Otis actually sort of kind of complained slightly about her taking the song and making it so huge that no one remembers that he's the one who recorded it and sang it and performed it for at least two years before she came along. You want to hear Seek two stories, same story told in different ways. Listen to those two songs.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  40. “So, you know, when I was talking about the message and the message about owning a story, go do this when you get a chance, when you get home. You know that song Respect R-E-S-P-C-T? You know that song, right? So who sang that? The Franklin. Everyone knows who read the Franklin, or everyone can hum it right now. If I played it to you, you'd know it in a heartbeat. But she's not the one who's actually first sang it. It's actually done by Otis Redding. Same words, same song, very different meaning. The song is really exact opposite of what the ether makes that song to be. Otis Redding's song is like, you know, I'm working all day woman and I'm like putting food on the table for you. And like when I fucking come home, I'm so sorry I said this.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  41. “The best storytellers leave you wanting to hear more. The best comedians just absolutely leave you wanting to hear more. There's a real art to that. You can't give it all away. You have to leave the audience saying, I wanted to hear, like, tell me more. And that's really important about knowing when to be able to stop. And you can overexplain things many, many ways. I'm really inarticulate today, by the way. I'm apologizing a little bit for that. But that's a really important skill to know when does that story end? Don't bury the punchline. Like so many times, it's like, there's a whole wind-up where I'm going to tell you now a story about a monkey that stole my... Don't do that. Just go right into it because you have them at the first minute. And then every minute after that, you're going to start losing audience share. So you want to get it fast and get right into it as fast as you can.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  42. “And good storytelling is that, right? So a really phenomenal story is one where you actually are having this relationship with the audience. And it's a two-way story. And people do that magically, you're at a whole nother kind of level of it. And when you talk about how you organize your questions, it sounds just so simple. Like, okay, he's got a bunch of questions. But there's so much thought going into it because you're actually engaging a story. You're doing it in that way so that you can get the whole thing kind of coming out.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  43. “You have to know when to stop. You have to know when to, you know, the message is also important, right? So this is something I often say. It's not just the story, but it's also the kind of stories you tell. And they have to be true to who you are as a storyteller. So look, I'm not a professional teaching people how to tell stories. I can't do that professionally. I know I do it. I know I practice it. I got it from my parents. I think it's a wonderful craft to think about read books. and read books and figure out what piece of that is really catching your heart. It always starts with the heart. It always comes from a place of commonality and laughter and love or pain or something from the heart. Before you can engage the mind. And those sorts of stories always tend to win.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  44. “More and read more. So there's real power there, and you can develop and get better at it. So what are some of the ways in which you can do this? So you have to be genuinely interested in the stories you're telling. Can't fake that. Like if you're interviewing someone, you've got to be actually a fan of that person. If you're not a fan of that topic or that person or not genuinely interested, it's just not going to work You got to own that story. It's going to be all you. You can't bluff a story. It can't kind of lie about it. You can learn a story and repeat someone else's story, but you really have to own it in like a deep, deep sense of it.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  45. “And I moved on. That's not a big deal to do today, but when you're 14 or 15, it feels big and scary and really hard to do. And I realized that there was power in that. By the way, we went all the way to the finals and this kit then got well and then they kicked me off the team and then this kid actually lost not saying anything here, but this is exactly what happened to my life. Literally, I like three debates, three rounds. We were doing fine. The team was doing great. Okay. He had chicken pox and then he was out of quarantine so he could come back on the team and then I was off. Okay, so you can practice and get better. So I practiced and I think about it and I think about how people tell stories. You open that first couple of pages. He talks that little story that he puts in there about what he was grappling with in his college days. It immediately captivates you. You just immediately want to know.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  46. “Of the magic. And it was really so stuff. But I had a break and the break was, this is such a funny break. So I was sent to boarding school in England. This was in England for a year. And the break was that we had a debate team, which is quite good, and it would go up against Eton and all the other schools like that. And the kid who was supposed to be the main kid for this debate team got ill. And they suggested that I fill that role. And I did. And I really had to, the first time I did this, they make fun of my accent because I had a bit of an accent. I didn't actually have much of an accent. But in their minds, I had a very strong Asian accent. And what I did was I started the debate with that very, very strong, I just overemphasized. Everyone laughed at me. I laughed at myself. I got over it.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  47. “Right. So I really agree with what you just said. And I think storytelling is one really powerful way to kind of rule the world. And a lot of people that we kind of look up to and think about like, you know, from Einstein to Elon Musk to Steve Jobs, they were really powerful storytellers in their own way, right? So they had this ability through words or through images to really convince you that you could do something that no one else could think about. And that just that mindshift that they created propelled you along with their vision and all of a sudden you were doing it. And you can absolutely learn those skills. You can actually get better at it. So when I was in high school, I was painfully shy, like painfully shy. Well, very thick glass, I had long hair. I did get beaten up all the time. I went to school for my high school. I went to school. There was like hogwarts without any...”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  48. “Gold in those angles. You do that all the time, actually. Learning how to exploit that is often your little trick to getting a head start.”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  49. “because it just put me in touch with a whole bunch of people who were completely unlike me and would think about the world in a completely different terms. I'd go in there and they'd be like, you must be an economist. I'm like, no, I'm a wildlife biologist. And they'd be like, wow, that's crazy. What are you doing here? But I just started realizing how they worked and how a whole different set of rules apply and how a whole other institution was working on problems, you know, and just it just opened my eyes. It just opened my eyes. The easiest thing would have been for me to go work for a nonprofit like the one I work for now, like Conservation International, the Nature. I didn't do that. I really particularly went and got jobs in areas that had nothing, nothing to do with my primary area of interest just to see what it looked like. And the best funnest things in the world are all on those angles, right? When you can bring two different fields together, there's so much...”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  50. “Out of the World Bank was a very strange thing at the time. And it was unbelievably useful to me. It was like the most useful thing I did. Really?”

    2017-12-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #285: Preserving Human Life, Battling the Busy Trap, and How to Stay Focused -- M. Sanjayan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT