Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova — The Tim Ferriss Show

This 10th-anniversary 'super combo' episode pairs two of Tim Ferriss's favorite past conversations. Jerry Seinfeld breaks down his systematized approach to writing comedy, the desk-to-stage feedback loop, the role of routine, exercise, and Transcendental Meditation, and how a brutal failure at the LA Comedy Store fueled his career. Maria Popova then walks through how she chooses and reads 12-15 books a week, her analog and digital note-taking systems, her philosophy of writing for an audience of one, and how she built and runs Brain Pickings on donations rather than ads. Throughout, both guests return to the tension between discipline and presence, and the conviction that you should make the kind of work you yourself want to exist.

• Seinfeld says writing is '95% rewrite' and describes two phases: the free-play creative phase and the polish/construction phase where he perfects every word.
  00:09:52
• His core writing system: set a defined, time-bounded writing session with an end time and a reward, because open-ended sessions are 'a ridiculous torture' for the brain.
  00:13:29
• Seinfeld claims audience feedback is the only feedback that means anything, and advises never talking to anyone about what you wrote for 24 hours to protect the good feeling.
  00:18:14
• Seinfeld recounts his favorite failure: Comedy Store owner Mitzi Shore told him she'd give his spots to another comic, and his resentment pushed him from writing 3 days a week to 7.
  00:28:46
• Popova reveals Brain Pickings started as an email newsletter to seven coworkers and now reaches about 7 million readers a month, yet she still writes for an audience of one—herself.
  00:51:43
• Popova describes building her own 'alternate index' on the blank last page of every analog book, listing key ideas (not keywords) and page numbers to synthesize patterns later.
  01:08:53
• Popova reveals that when she finally pulled her PayPal data for taxes, recurring small monthly donations outnumbered one-time donations two to one, surprising her.
  01:55:31

• Seinfeld credits Bill Phillips's book 'Body for Life' as a 'work of genius' that got him in shape by scripting every minute of the workout.
  00:16:36
• Seinfeld trains with weights three times a week for an hour plus interval cardio three times a week, and does Transcendental Meditation at least twice a day.
  00:21:24
• Seinfeld's billboard message would be a flag with just two words: 'just work.'
  00:36:36
• Popova reads 12-15 books per week and Brain Pickings reportedly takes 400+ hours of work per month.
  00:42:23
• Popova meditates 15-25 minutes each morning using a single Tara Brach 'smile meditation' recording she's used since the summer of 2010 on an old 3G iPhone used as an iPod.
  01:04:08
• Ferriss admits he assumed Seneca was a Native American elder for a year or two before realizing he was a Roman writer.
  01:13:02
• Popova carries a weighted jump rope when traveling as her plan B for cardio when she can't do sprints.
  01:36:27
• Popova's Brain Pickings Facebook page grew from 250,000 to nearly 3 million followers in under a year starting October, for reasons she couldn't explain.
  01:40:35
• Popova deliberately hides dates on her posts (keeping them only in the URL) to fight the culture's bias against older material.
  01:38:01
• Running Brain Pickings costs Popova several times her rent, which is why she added donations rather than advertising.
  01:57:35

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