#746: Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova

The Tim Ferriss Show

This episode is a two-for-one, and that’s because the podcast recently hit its 10-year anniversary and passed one billion downloads. To celebrate, I’ve curated some of the best of the best—some of my favorites—from more than 700 episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited. The episode features segments from episode #485 "Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success" and episode #39 "Maria Popova on Writing, Workflow, and Workarounds."

Please enjoy!

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Timestamps:

[00:00] Start

[05:16] Notes about this supercombo format.

[06:19] Enter Jerry Seinfeld.

[06:46] Jerry’s writing process for survival in the comedy ecosystem.

[15:43] Lessons Jerry would teach in a writing class and how they relate to his fitness methods.

[15:43] Soliciting creative feedback while preserving pride over doing the work.

[20:33] Routines essential to Jerry’s well-being and their frequency and duration.

[24:50] How nurturing creativity is like parenting, and Jerry’s belief about pain and knowledge.

[26:17] Additional ways Jerry mitigates depressive episodes.

[27:27] A resilience-building failure.

[32:05] The importance of playing the game well.

[33:42] “Survival is the new success.”

[36:12] Jerry’s billboard.

[39:06] Enter Maria Popova.

[39:30] Are you correctly pronouncing names you’ve only read but never heard?

[41:13] What does Maria do?

[41:50] What is Brain Pickings (now The Marginalian)?

[42:31] What percentage of New York Times best sellers are a result of Maria’s coverage?

[47:55] The common denominator that guides Maria’s reading list.

[49:16] The importance of writing for an audience of one.

[52:07] Contending with the temptation to create BuzzFeed-like content.

[59:44] The daily discipline required for Maria’s well-being.

[1:07:10] Maria’s note-taking system.

[1:12:53] Seneca and the time-tested challenge of presence vs. productivity.

[1:16:08] Start-up opportunity? Build a note-taking tool for heavy readers/highlighters.

[1:22:52] About the team behind [The Marginalian].

[1:24:28] Collaborative proofreading and copyediting.

[1:27:21] Self-reliance pathology and how to overcome it.

[1:29:56] Finding a professional personal assistant and learning to delegate.

[1:34:36] Maria’s weightlifting regimen and favorite bodyweight-only exercise.

[1:37:22] Designing content infrastructure to be evergreen.

[1:39:28] Cutting out the commentary contrarians.

[1:46:13] Scheduling social media.

[1:48:25] Coping with email — and sometimes snail mail.

[1:50:31] How to cultivate a personal inner circle and pre-screen book review requests.

[1:54:54] What donation model works best for site revenue?

[2:01:22] Recommended reading from [The Marginalian] and parting thoughts.

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Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, Margaret Atwood, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Dr. Gabor Maté, Anne Lamott, Sarah Silverman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, and many more.

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