Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman - The Tim Ferriss Show

This is a 'super combo' anniversary episode marking the Tim Ferriss Show's 10th year and 1 billion downloads, pairing two favorite past guests. Neil Gaiman discusses his writing rules and rituals, including the rule that he may do nothing but is not allowed to do anything other than write, his fountain-pen first drafts, and lessons from Terry Pratchett. Debbie Millman shares how a pattern of being deeply wounded by early rejection shaped her path, recounting the 2003 'Speak Up' blog attack that called her a 'she devil' and ultimately became the catalyst for her entire career. She also describes surviving childhood abuse and how therapy and her work with the Joyful Heart Foundation helped her integrate it. The episode closes with Millman teaching Milton Glaser's '10-year plan for a remarkable life' visualization exercise.

• Gaiman reveals that Ian Fleming, not Roald Dahl, plotted two of Dahl's most famous short story twists, including 'Lamb to the Slaughter' where a woman kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and feeds it to the detective.
  00:07:17
• Gaiman's biggest writing rule: at his desk he is allowed to do absolutely nothing or to write, but he is not allowed to do anything else, no crosswords, books, or phone calls.
  00:10:28
• Millman's core advice to graduates: identify the one most important thing to you, because she admits she lied to herself for decades that she became a designer for financial security when really it was just her overwhelming desire to live in Manhattan.
  01:06:13
• Millman reveals she survived roughly 18 years of abuse, including a physically and sexually abusive stepfather, five rejections from her own father, and constant terror that shaped her lifelong need for security.
  01:07:20
• Millman explains that the May 2003 Speak Up blog attack, which she initially saw as the lowest point of her career, became the catalyst upon which everything else in her career was built.
  01:35:08
• Millman recounts Milton Glaser's summer class exercise of envisioning your future life as if you would succeed at everything you wanted; her 2005 essay's far-fetched goals have almost all come true 12 years later.
  01:49:08
• Millman reveals she turned down the CEO job at Sterling Brands after agonizing four months, realizing hard decisions are only hard while you're making them and that most people live in a false world of scarcity.
  02:01:21

• Ian Fleming wrote each James Bond novel in two weeks by checking into an unpleasant hotel room he didn't want to explore, forcing himself to write.
  00:08:51
• Gaiman writes first drafts in fountain pen using two different colored inks so he can see at a glance how much he wrote each day.
  00:13:34
• Gaiman observed that when writers moved from typewriters to computers, story submissions ballooned from about 3,000 words to 6,000-9,000 words without more actual story, because adding text on a computer doesn't feel like work.
  00:15:37
• Gaiman tells young writers that anything you do can be fixed, but what you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page.
  00:21:59
• Gaiman says the biggest thing he learned from Terry Pratchett was a willingness to go forward without knowing what happens next.
  00:28:17
• New York's Fountain Pen Hospital is a real place that sells, reconditions, and looks after fountain pens; Gaiman recommends Lamy Safari pens for beginners.
  00:22:29
• The Joyful Heart Foundation, founded by Mariska Hargitay, works to end the backlog of hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits sitting in police departments.
  01:17:28
• Millman has written for every issue of Print magazine since her first piece and was later appointed its editorial and creative director.
  01:43:26
• Quoting writer Dani Shapiro, Millman argues courage matters more than confidence, since confidence only comes from repeated successful attempts that require courage to begin.
  02:05:32
• Naval Ravikant told his brother Kamal: 'If I always did what I was qualified to do I would be pushing a broom somewhere.'
  02:06:33

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