I Interviewed Tim Ferriss
I got to ask Tim Ferriss and Harley Finkelstein how they pursue their varied interests at SXSW
I’m waiting in line on sixth street on a beautiful Spring day in 2023. I am waiting to see if I will be one of the thirty or so people let into Shopify’s “Creator Mart” to listen to Harley (cofounder of Shopify) interview Tim Ferriss.
Two people ahead of me, I see Kevin Kelly, in a casual ball cap, just hanging out chatting with the other folks in line. The line starts to move and the officials up ahead are counting each person they let in. The line begins to slow down, I am a few feet from the door and get a glimpse of the tiny room full of products sold on Shopify.
“Twenty-eight…”, they let Kevin Kelly enter (who’d deny the great Kevin Kelly entry?). They look into the room and back to the line nervously. “Twenty-nine”… I’m next, but then an arm comes down and hovers a few inches in front of my chest, blocking me.
A long pause. The friendly bouncers are crunching the numbers. In the uncertain silence I begin rehearsing my appeal for entry. Finally the silence breaks.
“Thirty”. I am motioned in and join the cluster of folks circling up near the front where Harley and Tim are mid-conversation.
It was a fantastic experience to get to listen to their conversation on creativity and sharing products with the world with such a tiny group of people. Towards the end of the chat they opened it up for Q&A and I knew what I wanted to ask. I headed over to one last line with the other folks who wanted to ask a question. I was roughly in the middle of the line, content to listen but hoping for a chance to ask mine. As fate would have it, I got to ask the final question.
“How do you balance the space for tinkering and exploring many curiosities, with doubling down on one thing and putting all your effort into that since focus is so important for success?”
What followed was a beautiful moment where both Harley and Tim shared thoughtful and valuable answers. It was better than I hoped. Tim immediately leaned back and looked to Harley, “I’d be curious to hear your thoughts Mr. High Output Manager.” Harley then gave a wonderfully sincere explanation of how he approaches this and his experience trying to be “well rounded” for years. After feeling like he needed a new framework, he began to use the idea of “the T Shape”. The basic idea is that you want to be very good at one specific skill or role, having depth in one area, with a broader “passable” ability in the related areas necessary to do good work.
After his answer Tim said what I wanted to, “thank you for sharing that!” Then Tim gave a fantastic overview of how he handles this, using blocks of focus per category of work. He effectively batches his curiosity and focus by area of work, giving a space on the calendar for his urge to experiment and tinker to patiently wait. This is the exact approach I’ve stumbled into and written about before which was super cool to hear echoed from one of the great generalists around today. Towards the end of his answer, Tim even said the phrase every interviewer hopes to hear, “it’s a great question”. This was especially awesome to hear since I think of Tim as one of the masters of good questions.
I knew the conversation had been recorded and have been checking to see if Harley or Tim would ever share the full conversation for over a year now. This weekend, Harley tweeted out the link at long last. Check out the portion where Tim and Harley answer my question below and definitely listen to the full chat.