I’m Alex Berman and you’re watching SELLING BREAKDOWNS.
Tim Ferriss is not a man you can easily define.
You might know him as one of the main Angel Investors in technology.
Or perhaps you read one of his many best-selling self-help books.
And let’s not forget about his hugely popular podcast: The Tim Ferriss Show.
However whatever project Tim tackles, there are clear themes to how we approach any task
and the best way to understand this is by looking at the questions that he asks.
Today, we’re going to see how Tim Ferriss doesn’t ask questions like most other people,
not just to his podcast guests, but to himself.
This is how he can examine an idea or a process from every possible angle, to find a way to
improve it.
Tim’s real success started with BrainQUICKEN, an online supplements company which he had
for nine years before selling it off.
But it was the process of running the company that gave Tim the experience to find new ways
to look at productivity.
He often calls himself a human guinea pig and he drastically altered the way he worked
over the years.
This led to his pivotal book The Four Hour Work Week, which laid out his philosophy for
how to cut all the time people waste throughout the working day.
And he stayed pretty busy after that; he wrote follow ups, he’s an Angel investor, he’s
dipped his toe into tv presenting but it’s probably his podcast that has brought him
the widest audience, thanks to close to 100 million downloads.
He has a fascinating range of guests and the big selling point is that he manages to get
insights that few interviewers are able to.
Although he certainly has a natural charm, the key is in the type of question he asks.
Let’s quickly talk about questions
There are 2 basic categories; open and closed.
A closed question only allows a yes or no response.
We ask this type frequently, and a lot of the time, we actually want more than a yes
or no answer but the information is limited.
For example;
“Did you have a good day?”
It’s kinda weird to just answer “yeah” or “no” and then stop talking, you normally
elaborate a little.
But no one wants an essay as a response either.
Open questions have multiple or infinite answers but within these there are other kinds.
Factual questions are typically what, where, who.
They normally have a right or wrong answer.
Then there are divergent and evaluative questions.
These require critical thinking; why did this happen?
How did you do it?
So, what kind of questions do you think Tim Ferris is going to ask?
These last types, that provide more thoughtful answers.
He’s not so interested in his guest’s biography or the things you could read off
a fact sheet.
He wants insight into the choices that got them to the level of success they are at.
Of course, he still needs factual questions, since they keep the conversation flowing but
he make guests evaluate choices and behaviour far more than a regular host.
This isn’t just a feeling either.
Thanks to the work of a site called transcripts.io, we’ve been able to go through the transcripts
of some of his shows and see the data.
Let’s look at two interviews, both with actor Ed Norton.
One is on Tim’s podcast, where they talk for about 1 hour 10 minutes.
The other is from NPR, a show called Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
They talk for about 35 minutes but there are also quite a few clips from Norton’s films
peppered throughout, so it’s shorter really.
With Terry, Norton get’s 4 what-where-who questions and only 3 how questions, zero why.
On top of this there are about 15-20 closed questions.
You can hear it in Norton’s responses, he replies “yeah” nine times, and four “no”s
But with Tim Ferriss, there are 22 what-where-who’s, 7 how and whys and just three closed questions.
In the entire interview, Norton replies yeah, yes or no just three times, one of each.
Just think about that for a second, think about sitting down and talking to someone
for an hour and only replying yes or no, three times.
That would hardly ever happen, right?
And if you think this could just be a coincidence, we checked another guest.
When legendary record producer Rick Rubin talks to Tim, he answers Yeah or Yes about
7 or 8 times and two no’s.
But on another interview with Ben Greenfield on his fitness podcast, that number jumps
up to over 20 yeah’s and yes’s, as well as 5 no’s.
This is not a criticism of the other interviewers, they have a different purpose than Tim, a
different goal for their questions.
But Tim knows the real insight comes when he makes people really think about their answers.
And if you look at when Tim is interviewed himself, you see exactly why he adopts this
tactic.
The only way he was able to innovate was by asking better questions.
Just listen:
“In your business and your life it’s … you get there by improving your thinking and the
shortest way to get to better thinking is by asking better questions.
And so…
If people listen to a couple of episodes of my podcast, they’re going to start to recognise
certain recurring questions right”
And what kind of questions Tim?
“it’s those types of questions though that force you to look for the non-obvious
answers”
And his favourite kind of question is a seemingly absurd question.
He’s even said that this is one of the main similarities among the outstanding performers
in all fields
“The biggest commonality is asking absurd questions”
But why, what’s the point of them.
Well…
“So these absurd questions often produce breakthrough answers or brainstorm sessions
because you can’t use the constraints or assumptions that you normally do.”
So for example, these are some of the questions he’s talking about, which are either his
own or those of people he admires
“Why can’t you accomplish your 10 year plan in the next 6 months”
“And if you talk to say Peter Diamandis, chairman of the Xprize, he might ask the founders
of companies he’s looking at as potential investments, if you had to 10X the economics
of your startup in the next..fill in the period of time, 6 months, 3 months, how would you
do it?”
So now you see why he has this whole approach to questioning.
The only way you’re going to find new solutions to existing problems is by thinking about
them in a different way than before.
Tim Ferriss isn’t going to be asking these absurd questions at every step but even with
his so-called “regular” questions, he’s always looking for a better answer...from
the guest, and certainly from himself as well.
Let me know in the comments - what’s an absurd question you’ve been asked, and what
was your response?
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