Noor: Amazing. Super excited to have you on the podcast, Tim. How are you doing?

Tim: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on.

Noor: You don't really need too much of an introduction, everyone. Um, those of you from your awesome books and blogs. Um, so I wanted to start by talking about one of my favorite things that you put out, which is your life calendar.

So you've written about this concept and, um, I think it's a really amazing tool to help people visualize their time on earth. Um, how has creating that life calendar changed your perspective on life and, um, how do you think it's, it helps other people?

Tim: We moved to a new house and I was just like going through all my stuff and one of the things I have is I had like a tube and I hadn't looked at it in years, and I opened it and there's a life calendar that we had, I had gotten back when we first made them.

You know, it's, it's, it's a, it's obviously a digital image, but it's also, we actually, you.

It is, it is a shocking image. It's just like the, something about um, you know, if you show someone like the, the years, you know, it's like, it's not a big number, but years are long, you know, and, and you know, we know the number of years pretty clearly, and there it is, right? It makes sense. But weeks for some reason, it's this perfect storm where like, it seems like such a short time with it.

A nothing a week, whatever. It's like a week just passed whatever. It's like it was Sunday, now it's Sunday again. Maybe nothing even happened and whatever. Or I'm gonna like spend a few weeks working on this project. It's just like we, we, the weeks come and go. And so we feel like we have like endless weeks, like, like tens of thousands of weeks ahead.

But actually, you know, there's like 4,000 something weeks in the typical like long human life. And when you look at those, especially if you consider the ones you've already used, it's like this little number of boxes and you can just see them all and you're like, that's it. That's my weeks left. Like I can see them all right here.

There's just this little grid of weeks and it's crazy. And especially since, you know, I, the calendar goes up to 90, like how much productive work are you gonna be doing at like 87? Maybe some, but maybe your productive work goes till you're 70, maybe only till, you know, maybe your prime goes till you're 60.

You know, when you start thinking of it this way, it's just like, wow. There's like a little row of, of weeks in these little boxes and it's like. A little, a little chunk. And, um, and it just, I think it makes you want, it reminds you that the weeks are precious and that you should, that time is limited. Um, so, uh, I, I think it's a useful, I, I think it's a motivating thing and also in some ways, you know, it's like, look, that's not that many weeks, but that's how many weeks Steve Jobs, in fact, he, you know, he had, he only had partial this, he built Apple in that time.

That's how many weeks, you know, like Julius Caesar had, um, you know, these people conquered the world like Genghis Khan, you know, and it's like, okay, you could do a lot in those weeks if you just really like make each week you make some progress. Like those add up. So I think it's like, it's, it's, it's, it's both like motivating and, and, and sad, but also kind of in its own way, kind of optimistic.

Noor: When you framed it that way, did you know it was gonna resonate with people? Like, did it shock you? Was it like immediately like, whoa, this is insane? Did it like kind of shake you or, yeah. I mean, I mean, been sort of stirring on it for a while.

Tim: Well, I, it started when I was just doing this on my computer with, um, with like, uh, uh, I had a word doc that just, I just put like an MA capital M every month.

And when something special happened, you know, every, every, I think, um. 36 months maybe. You know, I went to the next line. So each level I was three years. And then every, when something special happened, I bolded the, the m Um, if something really special happened, like I moved, um, I might change the color. So now they're all green instead of black.

Um, so you can kind of look and just kind of see your life. And I, for me, it was just a little procrastination thing I did. It was just kind of an interesting thing. It was my life calendar. And so it started with an idea to like, oh, let's, um, I'm gonna like talk about, I'm.

Something that you think is interesting, you can just write about. So I wrote about that as kind of a way to just see your life and something more than just your, you know, your January, February calendar. Um, it's a way to kinda look, you know, kinda look at your whole life and weeks seemed. More interesting because there's still a small number, but you know, each week is, is shorter.

So I settled on that, wrote a little post about it and you know, you never know when you write is it gonna be something that some people like and move on? And no one ever mentions it again, which is a lot of my posts. Uh, or is it going to, you know, really click and, and really make the rounds and come back again and again?

And this is one of those that definitely did that. I guess, you know, people bring it up with me a lot and I know a lot of people bought the calendar and use it. You know, it's just one of those things that, that, um, um, it, it resonated with people for probably the same reason that I was doing my own little m calendar, because there's something about it that just kind of just helps you zoom out on your own life for better or worse.

Noor: Yeah, you have this sort of related concept that you explored, you know, the tail end where you talk about how, um, you know, we actually have way less time left with our loved ones, and we realize, you know, when you leave home, you're, you have, you know, you spent 90% of the days that you're gonna spend with your parents.

Um, so how did that realization affect you in your, your own life and your relationships? Did, did it cause this big shift in how you related to your friends and family? Um, and, and what is your sort of advice again with that realization for what other, how other people should, um, spend and cherish that time?

Tim: Yeah, that, that was kind of like a double whammy. 'cause like the weeks chart or, you know, I even did a little days chart where you can see each day as a dot and you're like, damn.

Noor: Yeah,

Tim: I can see all the days there. They all are in one page. You can print it out like you can see each day. It's just not that many.

So that's, that's one of the whammies. And then the second whammy is the fact that not all of the things that are really important in life are distributed evenly among there. Um, and you know, in some cases you do a lot more of things later in your life. So it's nice you're like, okay, well I might be halfway through my life, but I'm only a quarter of the way through this thing.

I love, you know, maybe I don't, I didn't travel. Outside the country really until I was like 18. So I feel like I, I I'm, I might be, you know, about halfway through the years, but I, I think I hopefully have like a good amount of, of traveling left a big portion. On the other hand, there are some things that are the opposite and the most poignant one, um, is the time you spend with your family or sometimes you're like your childhood friends.

Um, and it's this weird fact that most of us, at least if kind of like living in the kind of American template. Um, you grow up with your parents in the same house. You are roommates with them for 18 years, so you see them every day. Um, you know, 300 plus days a year, you, you spend at least some time with your parents.

Um, and then you head off to college or wherever you go. And, you know, some people end up, you know, again, there are some people who live on the same block as their parents, and they see their parents multiple times a week their whole life. That's way at the. Kind of college, uh, the college attendee person, American's Way, you know, it's not really what people I know do they, even if they live in the city with their parents, they see them a couple times a month, you know, maybe once a week.

And then a lot of people, which is not something that humans used to ever do, is we just live thousands of miles or hundreds of miles from our parents. And, um. And so it's like, okay, maybe I spend 10 or 20 days a year with my parents now, and if you add up the, if you're the, if you're lucky number of years you have left with living healthy parents quickly, you're like, oh my God.

Like the day I graduated from college, I had like a total of a year of days left with my parents, like in person hanging out. And so I was like 95% done with my parents. Awful thought. Um, and yeah, this was, this was one of those, you know, uh, posts that I, I woke up with an idea. I almost just like tweeted about it and then I was like, ah, let me like, make it a little post, which was a, like a procrastinating decision because I was supposed to be working on, I think like SpaceX post or some, one of my big, big posts and I was like, uh, icky big, big posts like doc, you know, page.

46 of the Word document, like a hundred tabs open or open a new document and write this little, this little thing and post it today. And that says just, and I, and of course I always said, it's gonna take two hours, it's gonna do it, and then I'll get to my other work. And of course it took nine hours, but it clicked.

Like, you know, I've done a lot of other, other mini posts that again, like they, they come and they go, they disappear. They, they, they, this one just really

Noor: clicked.

Tim: Yeah. Uh, and you don't know what those are gonna be, but like yeah. I've had, I've actually had a lot of different people tell me they moved cities because of that post, you know, to go live near, near, closer to their parents or,

Noor: yeah.

Or

Tim: you know, a less extreme version as they schedule an extra trip an extra week every year with their parents to, you know, double that time or, um, or maybe that they keep it in mind when they are with their family to spend higher quality time with them. And the same can go with friends. Like you can have a group of friends that hang, hung out every day in high school.

Now you're all live in different cities and you get together once a decade and it's like, wow. We have like, uh, 15 total days left after doing 700, uh, in, in high school. And it's like, you know, maybe we should do more than just one weekend, every decade, once a year, you know, you multiply, you 10 x that the number of total days left.

Noor: Yeah. So has that taken on, um, new meaning or new poignancy now that you've become a parent?

Tim: Well, um, I. I think it will later. I think when you have a baby, it just, it should, I mean, it definitely should. I should say, you know, I've now done almost a year with this baby, and that's about 5% my total days. But even then I'm like 5%, I have 95 left.

It's chill. Of course that quickly turns into 20% and 55% and 70% and then it gets extremely upsetting. And it's just, it's because when you have a baby, you're in, so you're so in the early stage that I think it's hard to, it's a little bit like when you're 15, how many 15 year olds are really concerned about like.

You're not thinking about you wanna turn the next age, you're not, you're not worried about that. Um, you know, that's for middle age and old people to think about. Right. You don't have to worry like, oh, I'm so old. Like, no, no, no. Group of 17-year-old is talking around making fun of their 18-year-old friend.

'cause like, oh, you're old. It's a great thing to be old then. So I think I'm in that kind of stage with the baby where I'm like, I have the luxury of feeling like, oh, I'm at the beginning. I'm not at the tail end, I'm at the tail beginning. Um, but that will change. And I, even now I'm trying to absorb stuff like.

One thing that is, is at the tail end is my relationship with this baby because she will stop being a baby.

Noor: Mm-hmm.

Tim: And she'll be a toddler and then a child. And that's really different than a baby. She acts like a baby right

Noor: now. Yeah.

Tim: And that's like fleeting. That is about to end. And I'll only have that in videos from that on memories and look back and say, my God, she was a baby.

She still is right now. So if, if I do, if I have a day when I'm really busy all day and I don't, you know, my wife and I alternate, you know, we, we, we split up the mornings with her and then I'll sometimes put her to bed, you know, usually, but like I'll often not really see her until I put her to bed if I don't do the morning and I'm busy and a weekday and I'm like, damn, I spent 20 minutes with her today.

And most of that was like reading books and. Feeding her and putting her to sleep, and I hate that. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Come on. There's like, there's like a hundred baby days left. Like, that's it. And so I am trying to, I mean, you can drive yourself crazy with these things. Like, you can always be thinking about these things.

Yeah. And this is the last time we'll be doing this. And at some point it becomes self-defeating. It becomes, um, like a masochistic thing. You wanna also live in the moment and enjoy it without obsessing over the time. But, um, there's some balance there. You don't want to be unconscious and realize all the time past that you realizing it.

And you also don't wanna be, you know, self upset every day.

Noor: I really loved your, your, from your fourth trimester post. How, you know, you don't become a parent in a day. It's something that's, uh, it's a spectrum. It sort of happens over time. Totally. So how do you, how have you noticed that, that, like, that shifting in yourself from like, you know, that that day when, oh, suddenly you have this human that you're, you know, in charge of, you're taking care of to, you know, almost a year out.

Um, what, what is sort of that gradient, what does that spectrum feeling like? And as you're looking at, um, parents with older kids or even your parents, what do you think, what do you think shifts in in people as they, as they mature into parenthood?

Tim: Yeah. I, I don't think I realized what a spectrum was. I mean, think about like, if.

Like, okay. So it's a physically, strength wise, it's a spectrum. You start holding a six pound thing all the time. Now, 10 months later, I'm holding a 22 pound thing all the time. Constantly in one arm, I'm throwing it up in the air. Then that's 35 pounds. Right. And so I'm sure, especially my wife has smaller arms.

I'm sure she's gained a lot of strength. I'm sure she can now pick her up in a way that if she couldn't at the beginning, but you don't notice it because it happens day by day, you kind of. Get prepared on the job. It's just kind of nice. And so that's obvious, that's a metaphor for like how everything, like at the very beginning you have no relationship with them.

You're doing no parenting at all. At the beginning, you're, you're caring for something like you would care for, uh. Not even a pet. You have a, you're, you're, you have much more of a relationship. You know, when you're training a dog, you can't even train a newborn. I mean, it's like caring for like a fish or a tortoise.

It's a high maintenance tortoise, but you're caring for, um, so you're like, you're, you're, um, you have a baby, but you're not a parent. And then, um, now I can say, you know, I'm 10 months in. I have, I have a relationship with her that would've blown my mind if I just time machined from week three to today at, you know, whatever it is.

Week 45. Um, I would, if I just time machine and saw myself, you know, interacting with her and, sorry, you know, now when I walk in the room, she waves. She know, she just goes, she can't talk yet. She just, like, I say hi, and she just waves, right? And it's so cute. But I'm used to it now. I'm like, of course she waves at me.

That's her little thing. But if I saw that at the beginning, oh my god, she knows where I'm, she's waving at me. You get used to it as you go. So I still now see my friends, my sisters, my friends who have two, four year olds, whatever, and they're saying, you know, the parents and they're saying stuff like, okay, now what do you say?

Or like, wash your hands. Or like, okay, but do you see why that's not nice? I'm like, you're a parent. That is so weird. I don't know how to be like that. But of course they got there day by day. So it's this really, and then, and then, you know, eventually you see someone with a 10-year-old and they just know how to.

Be a 10 year old's dad. And I'm like, I don't know how to do that. You know, I could try, but I, I feel I don't know who I am as that person's dad and I, I'd be a mess. You figure it out day by day.

Noor: You've also written a ton about, um, procrastination. How do you think that you're thinking on, you know, how to defeat procrastination has changed over time and like what do you feel like the most effective strategies are because.

Um, I know, I think a lot of new parents struggle with it too because they're like, now they have this other thing that's competing for their attention that they, that they love, that, you know, for however long is on, um, maybe like a really different schedule than what, than what, uh, they were used to.

Tim: Well, for what it's worth, um, the baby hasn't made it worse.

It's, she's made it better. Um. Because it was never a time issue. I was never saying, you know, I need, I work 60 hours a week and oh no, now I have to stop at 6:00 PM I can't work till two in the morning and I don't wanna work on weekends at all anymore and be with the baby. So where that time's just gone, it's never that.

If I did 20 deep focused hours a week on any point in my career, that's a huge week and I get everything done I need to get done deep focus. So I still have those 20 hours, right. I, I, I basically give myself, yeah, 35, 40 work. Hours in the week that I block off and I can work in those. Um, knowing that I'm stopping at six to put this baby to bed and hang out with her and put her to bed, like, um, it just means that at two I'm much more likely to be working than I used to be.

'cause otherwise I'd say I can, I, I'll, I'll, I'll have dinner and I'll, I'll, I'll do a big session tonight after dinner. And just knowing that even though if that wasn't the plan, knowing that, um, mm-hmm I would've no pressure to work. So think it's been helpful. Um. That said, it's not easy, it's just that the baby hasn't made it harder.

It's a, it's a constant problem. It's like, um, um, so look right here next to me. This is an a two hour hour glass. Mm-hmm. Um, see it's falling in there right now. Um, this is a tool I use, basically the, the, the procrastinating part of my brain is stupid. It's, um, a dopamine driven ill irrational instant gratification monkeys, the monkey, I call it.

The monkey is powerful. Mm-hmm. And, and, and is deeply embedded into your, the, the neurons in your brain and, and, and drives a lot of your behavior, but it's not very smart and you can trick it. Um, so the, here's the, here's the hourglass. Is, is one of like many examples of something. I use a tool that can kind of like, um, overcome irrational, um, you know, monkey driven behavior.

So one of the things the monkey does is. For example, this podcast, we started today at 5:00 PM Central Time where I live. And if I, you know, typical Tim would say, you know, I don't know, I did some other stuff. It's now, it's three. And I would say, oh my God, it's, it's already three. Oh. And I, and I, I can't even work till dinner tonight.

I had this thing at five, so this day's shot. I'm not gonna get anything done. Right. Which makes no sense at all. Mm-hmm. But in my head, that's how I would do it. It would be because it's not this perfect situation. It's not, you know, nine in the morning or 10 in the morning with this big open window to get into a deep writing flow.

It's already three afternoon and later in the afternoon. I have this thing. I'm just not, I'm, I'm not gonna be able to do it today. I'm discouraged. So instead I mm-hmm. I would, I have this two hour hourglass and I've watched that sand go down a million times and I know it takes forever for this thing to go on.

This is, this is like an eternity, this hourglass. Or maybe you could think of it as a movie. Yeah. You know, a movie is long. It's like, it's three, you could be, the opening credits are going on a pretty long movie right now. And you could work until it's over. Oh, I have forever. Suddenly. It reframes it. So this hourglass is something I would flip over at three to remind myself, I have a whole hourglass.

I can get, I can write a thousand words right now. I can write 1500 words if I'm in a flow while that's going. I can have a massive writing day in this tiny little window. So I have so many of these things. Some of them work all the time, some of them work sometimes. Um, but it's basically a constant like cat and mouse thing, um, where I'm just trying to.

Frame things in a way. 'cause work is never that bad. You know, I'm not, um, doing something really that well. I'm sitting at a thing and I'm writing in my colloquial voice about topics that interest me. And sometimes I have to research. I have to go and read about things that interest me, and then I have to outline them, oh no, I have to organize like my fun writing project.

None of it is actually hard if you actually are doing it, but it's this feeling because it's. Like that, you know, it feels no different than it felt when I was writing a college paper, like, ah, anything but this right now. And that's not a rational feeling. The dread does not match the, the misery of the task.

Noor: And that's really interesting insight because I think a lot of people, I dunno at least I think of you as sort of like this, um. Sort of this idyllic state of like, you know, when someone's doing something that they love, you can see it in their work, right? It's so clear from, you know, the way that you communicate, um, all these ideas that you really, that you really love it and it's really the gift that you have, um, that is, you know, really special compared to all the things that you're doing.

But, um, I, I think it's really useful for people to hear that even when you're doing the thing that you love and the thing that you're great at, it's still hard, right? Because I think there's also this other. That's like, oh, when you're doing the thing that you love, you'll never work a day in your life.

And it'll be easy and it, and it happens, um, you know, automatically, uh, for some people maybe, yeah. And I did a post

Tim: about, I've written a few procrastination posts and in one called the Procrastination Matrix, I actually illustrated this concept where I graduated college and I didn't know this yet. I thought, yeah, if you find the thing you love, it'll be easy.

You won't procrastinate anymore. So I said, you know, in college all I did was while I was supposed to be doing the reading. By the way, when I got to college, I was so excited to do the reading. I picked these classes that specifically that I was excited about. I was, oh my God, I'm taking this, this renowned professor teaching this amazing topic.

This is so much better than high school. This is so fun. I got the books and I'd look at the cover and it would get me all excited, and then what would I do? I wouldn't do the reading. Mm-hmm. Or self-defeat. I would do anything but the reading anything but working on the paper, and so I would play the piano.

I had a keyboard in my room and I love playing the piano and composing music, so I would just be doing that all the time. So I mm-hmm. Looked at that and I said, okay, music is the thing I should do. So I went to LA after college to write music, to compose film scores, was my first idea. And sure enough, as soon as the piano was the desk I was supposed to be sitting at and I actually had this score, I was supposed to write the dream, the thing I dreamt of in college, I'm now doing it.

I procrastinated like crazy. Anything but having to write this score, I. And so what, what did I do? I started blogging. I started this blog called Underneath the Turban. Mm-hmm. And I just would blog for fun, and I wrote 300 blog posts in six years as a procrastination activity from doing the things I was supposed to be doing.

So then I went to blog, and now here we are again. So, of course it's, it's a deeper problem. It's, it's, it's, there's something there. You know, Stephen Pressfield writes this great book called The War of Art, and he just calls it resistance. And it's this, this, it's this thing that will just try to keep you from accomplishing your goals.

And it's, it's powerful and you have to fight it every day. Um, and I do agree with that, at least for me. I think some personalities are different and God bless them, but that's not me.

Noor: Yeah. That's super interesting. So, so how is the feeling of writing this book happen? How, how has it felt this time around after?

Yeah. Basically this whole, um, collection of experiences of you basically doing the blog as a, um, to avoid do, to, to avoid doing music, having the experience of the previous book. Um, yeah. What, what, what has it been like this time?

Tim: Well, I will say that you know, as much as I'm saying that procrastination doesn't just disappear when you start doing something you like, it also, it's something you can get better at.

Yeah. I mean, think about someone who eats really badly and then they start to eat better. They don't exercise at all, and then they start to become an exerciser. Like you can change, you can evolve and grow up and improve in certain ways and become more in control of your actions.

Noor: Yeah,

Tim: and and also just, you know, sometimes it's just by learning tricks.

Maybe the person exercises because they learn they have to have a trainer that's gonna meet them, whatever it is. Um, I have improved, I will say. So blog posts, I procrastinated from those, but I got better at doing those. And then I wrote my first book, like full length book, and it was a complete procrastination nightmare because I realized how much I was relying on the adrenaline that you get from knowing you're about to show the world.

This thing you're writing in the next few days, that's part of blogging. You have adrenaline going because this is, this is about to go live. That would motivate me, that would scare me sometimes and really like, get me, you know, get, get the juices flowing in a book. I'm like, I'm gonna wake up today, work really hard not to, you know, not to say if I work hard, I can finish this thing and publish it tomorrow.

No. If I work really hard today, I can get from 32% done to 32.6% done. Like that is so demotivating. If I had the biggest day of the year, I'll get to 33.4% done. That is so not motivating. You can't rely on adrenaline. It's this whole different part of your, it's just a different mindset entirely. And I, and it killed me.

Yeah, just whipped me around. The procrastination. That instant gratification monkey just owned me. So now I'm writing a second book. I'm saying, okay.

Noor: And I

Tim: talked with my assistant about this. I was like, what are the, because she had to watch the horror story up close. What are the lessons here? How can we design this pro, this book, and this process in a way that would be better?

And I, and I completely changed the way I was doing it, and it's actually been going a lot better. I said, okay, I'm gonna have a totally different mindset instead of like goal oriented, like, I'm gonna finish this post this week. You know, the book's almost done since that's so far away. It's gonna be the opposite.

It's gonna be like going back to high school when it's like the bell saved by the bell. I'm free class is over. I'm free. I'm out. Mm-hmm. I have to like, I have to, I don't wanna go to class. I have to, okay, now I'm focused. Now I'm out. And so the way I did that was I have to write 800 words a day, a weekday.

Uh, once I hit that 4,000 mark, I'm done for the week. If I hit that on Thursday, I'm free for the whole week. I have a three day weekend.

Noor: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really helpful orientation. It's sort of like this immediate gratification of today, like, I'm gonna be free today. That's awesome. Yeah. Are there any ideas that we're all children, you still have to

Tim: have something where the kid is like, excited and what is that gonna be?

Noor: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are there any, um, ideas or tidbits or vignettes from the, from the book that you can share?

Tim: Right, so this, this is, this book is a huge topic. It goes from the beginning of the universe until the end of the universe, and I'm covering the whole story of everything. That's the idea. Which sounds like a, you know, it sounds insane.

Sounds like a huge topic. Amazing. But actually because it's so broad, it's more fun. 'cause I can pick and choose everything that's most interesting to me along the way. And I can, if something's really icky or hard, you know, I was just writing today about our oxygen isotopes and I was like, oh, it's so boring.

And I was like, cut it. Forget it. Skip it, move on. No one's gonna be like, mm-hmm. I read the story and everything, but I realized that you didn't mention oxygen isotopes. No one's gonna say that, right. And you don't have to go that deep on anything. Right? You don't have to go into the 10 different theories about this and weigh them.

You can just talk about, some scientists think this, some not scientists. Think that we're not quite sure. Move on.

Noor: What have you written so far that got you into the most flow state or that you thought was like sort of the most fun?

Tim: Well, the first part was fun because it's my favorite topic. It's space, you know, it's the universe and space.

Mm-hmm. And how big everything is and how long ago everything was. And the galaxy and. So that was really fun. I that flowed because I also just know I'm a nerd about that stuff, so I know a lot about it. So I had to do less research. I loved learning about evolution and now I'm deep in humans and learning about like how long it took, even though started working rapidly in, you know, geological evolutionary time.

How long it took from when we diverged from chimps to, you know, hominins like Lucy and then Homo Habilis and Homoerectus. It took millions of years. That's millennia. The hand es to slowly improve and like the brain to get a little bigger and like hunting to start before things started picking up speed.

And it's just like, what were they doing? What did the, what did thousands of millennia of Homoerectus and Homo guest, or what were they doing and who were they? And like. It's just, yeah, it's, the timescales are wild. Like our lives are so short and everything for us is decades and years and you know, maybe a century we can understand and it's like those are blink of an eye in this story.

So I could go on forever. I mean, that's, that's why this is a, a good book topic for me because it is just, it indulges in my curiosity.

Noor: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, it's related to one of your, um, insights, which was that, you know, for millions of years, mobs used to use moonlight for nocturnal navigation, and the moth's brain hasn't had enough time to update itself for the modern world.

So now, you know, they mistake lights for the moon and basically that, you know, humans aren't that different. That, you know, we have these hunter-gatherer brains, but we're living in an advanced civilization. So. Kind of what, when you're looking at the danger scale, people can be, you know, afraid to ask someone out on a date or quit a job or do all of these different types of things.

Kind of like what you're talking about with procrastination, where you have this monkey brain and it's used to, you know, whatever, hunting instead of, you know, writing a book, which is not, maybe it's natural environment. So, totally.

Tim: I think if you're in a bar that's gonna come

Noor: up as you're, and

Tim: you, you're at a party and you really wanna approach someone or you have a coworker you want to ask out or whatever.

And you're just so scared, or especially, you know, especially like at a, a stranger at a party and you're just like, oh, I can't go up to them. You're being a moth, flapping around a porch light. You're mistaking, you know, they're mistaking the porch light for the moon, and you're mistaking the potential rejection of a stranger who you'll never see again for danger, because just like the light, the only light in the night sky used to be the moon.

The only people you might get rejected by in 30,000 BC was the small number of potential mates. And they're all friends with each other and they're gonna talk about how they rejected you and how icked out they are by you now. And you're gonna become a joke and you're never gonna mate now. And your genes that went on for billions of years to get to you just died, which is the biggest nightmare that the genes can have, which just makes, makes us terrified of that.

So there's so many things like that, that it's, procrastination is another example. I mean, it's like this dread. It comes from me. There's some irrational fear or this inability to see that it makes sense for my happiness later today and next week and next year to just work right now. Can't see it. So you do this irrational behavior.

I.

Noor: Yeah. And I feel like, you know, we're seeing AI accelerate everything so much faster. Right. And I think another one of the things that I really liked was you were talking about how, um, AI friends are becoming more of a thing and you kind of made the, um, you know, made the leap that you think AI spouses are gonna be a thing.

Right. How do you think our, um, you know, hunter gatherer brain and family structures are gonna deal with AI spouses? Can you just talk a bit about that?

Tim: It's super weird. Yeah. I mean, I, I think the, the future's just gonna be super weird. Um, you know, again, day by day we don't get used to it as it happens, but if you time machined 30 years forward right now, I think certain things would absolutely blow your mind.

So, you know, advanced AI is gonna have no problem at kind of understanding what makes a human, you know, connect with something. What makes. Um, a human, uh, attach and get broke close and the emotional needs of a human. And we think that has only can be met by another human because that's the world that we live in.

That's all we've ever seen. The, the computers in this world aren't good enough, even close to, to, to equal what a human can do for us emotionally and whatever friendship. That's gonna change. These things are gonna get really good. They are gonna have kind of an actual mind of their own, even if it's not biological mind.

It's a real mind that will get to know you, that will have a personality that you will, um, be, that will know everything about you and will ask how your day was and will follow up. And really, you know, again, whether it's conscious or not, I don't know, maybe it is. And which, if it's conscious, it's easy. Of course there's gonna be spouses, right?

It's just a different, it's like an alien species. Even if it's not conscious, we won't know if there, if there's no actual, you know, consciousness behind the eyes. It'll act like there is, it'll pretend that it'll seem like there is, it'll act like there's emotions and so our brains just aren't that we're gonna fall for that Again.

Our brains are wired to, when something acts like that, we get attached to it and, and so, you know. I don't know how it'll play out.

Noor: So do you think it's gonna be like, um, smartphones where, you know, the richest people in the world have the same best thing, the best smartphone is, you know, whatever. Um, an Apple phone and everyone, no matter how much money you have, that's the best phone that you can get.

So do you think that AI is gonna result in this age of abundance? Everyone's gonna have the best AI spouse, or do you think it's gonna be, you know, the more dor dystopian version of it?

Tim: I think it'll be like a lot of tech. Um, where at first the really, really high tech ais, you know, maybe are expensive, but I think it will be like, so I, you know, I've talked about with like phones before, it's weird to me that, you know, I've been at like a dinner with, you know, billionaires, right?

And

Noor: mm-hmm.

Tim: They. Fly private. They have many estates all around the world. They have giant staffs of things that almost no one I know could have even remotely afford. But what are they using? They're using an iPhone.

Noor: Yeah.

Tim: So is everyone else I know.

Noor: Yeah.

Tim: Um, I went to Nigeria and hung out with, um, a guy who was a driver there.

He's a, you know, he is a driver and he's, he lives in a small house with his four siblings and he has an iPhone. He has the same iPhone that Elon Musk has. So, yeah, I, I suspect that AI will be an, an equalizer in many ways, not for the people who own it. Like the Tim Cook makes a lot more money off iPhones than you or I ever will, right?

So the people who own AI are gonna get insanely rich. They own the companies, own the software and the ip, but the people using it. I do think that, um, people all over the world will get to use this stuff and benefit from it.

Noor: Yeah. Amazing. Well, thanks so much for taking the time. It was awesome. We get to talk about your book, parenting Future ai, everything.

It was amazing.

Tim: I wanna next time have you on and interview you so we can talk about all the things you're doing. 'cause everything you're doing, uh, blows my mind and it's gonna, I'm gonna have to talk about that stuff in the book because it's, um, some of the coolest parts of the future are people like, you're like making actually.

So we're gonna have to chat a lot more as I get to the future part of my book.

Noor: Yeah.