Episode 039 Maria Popova

Summary

• This episode of the Tim Ferriss Show is about dissecting excellence and finding the tools and tactics that can be applied.
• The guest is Maria Popova, a reader, writer, interestingness hunter, gatherer, and curious mind at large.
• Maria is most known for her project Brain Pickings, which started as a weekly email sent to seven friends and now has over 5 million readers per month.
• The episode covers Maria's life, her workflow, her tools, her workarounds, and her inquiry into how to live and what it means to lead a good life.
• Tim Ferriss also mentions the books he is currently reading: William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade and John Muir's Wilderness Essays.
• Bonus credit is offered to anyone who can figure out why Maria's Facebook fan page went from a few hundred thousand people to over 2 million people.
• Maria Popova reads and writes in order to think about how to live a meaningful life
• Brain Pickings is a record of her thinking
• Maria Popova does not review books, but instead provides annotated readings
• She reads and writes about a wide array of disciplines, eras, and sensibilities
• The common denominator is how to live a good, meaningful, and fulfilling life
• Maria Popova has been doing this for 8 years and it takes 400+ hours of work per month
• She vets books by asking if they illuminate some aspect of how to live well
• Maria Popova writes for an audience of one, herself, despite the fact that 7 million people read her work every month.
• Oscar Wilde said that a true artist takes no notice of the public, but Popova believes it is more of a human struggle to be seen and understood.
• Werner Herzog said it is important for his films to reach an audience, but he does not need to hear the reactions.
• Popova believes the web is a selfperfecting organism, and the motive is to perfect the commercial interest, not the human spirit.
• Tim Ferriss believes in putting out the things he would want to consume himself, and when writing The 4Hour Workweek, he found it challenging.
• Wrote first few chapters of The 4Hour Workweek, but they were too pompous and stilted
• Threw out first few chapters and wrote slapstick ridiculous chapters instead
• Drank two glasses of Malbec wine and wrote as if to two close friends
• Current day includes waking up 8 hours after going to bed, meditating, going to the gym to read, writing 23 articles, taking a break, dealing with admin stuff, and private time in the evening
• Practices guided vipassana meditation with Tara Brach's podcast
• Works out with sprints and body weight exercises on elliptical
• Maria Popova prefers to read digitally, using the Kindle app or a PDF viewer
• When reading older books that are out of print, she uses analogue devices such as sticky notes and pens
• Her notetaking system includes highlighting passages, writing herself little notes with acronyms and shorthand, and creating an alternate index on the last page of the book
• She also marks external quotes and allusions with a tab at the top of the page
• Following these references can lead to discovering new works and pushing oneself out of the filter bubble
• Maria Popova believes that philosophy is the only way to figure out how to live
• Maria Popova uses the Kindle app to take notes and highlights while reading
• She then copies and pastes the notes and highlights into an Evernote file
• She also takes a screen grab of the highlighted passage and emails it to her Evernote account
• To remove formatting, she uses the "paste and match style" or "paste as plain text" functions
• She has considered offering a scholarship or hackathon to find a better solution
• Maria Popova has an assistant who helps with admin tasks
• Maria Popova has an assistant and a copy editor to help her with admin and proofreading tasks
• She writes in HTML and emails her copy editor the articles from the preview page on WordPress
• Her partner pushed her to get help due to the overwhelming demand of her work
• She found her assistant through a recommendation from a trusted person
• She does not own Microsoft products and uses email to communicate with her copy editor
• She uses WordPress VIP and is considering the share a draft plugin to share drafts with people
• Maria Popova is a writer and the creator of Brain Pickings.
• She has an assistant, Lisa, who helps her with various tasks.
• Tasks include coordinating travel, sending thank you cards to donors, and managing college requests for speaking engagements.
• Communication is done via email and text.
• Maria prefers bodyweight exercises and weighted jump rope for her workouts.
• Brain Pickings does not have comments or dates displayed on posts, as Maria wants to decondition the idea that something is not important if it is not at the top of the search results or feed.
• Maria Popova does not enjoy comments on her work, as they often contain spam, trolling, or people trying to plug their own thing.
• Her Facebook page experienced a sudden growth of 10x in less than a year, which she does not understand.
• She delegates comments on Facebook to her assistant, who is instructed to delete comments that are not thoughtful or do not engage with the content.
• Maria Popova writes for herself, but also for the benefit of others, and uses Buffer for Twitter and her own hands for Facebook to share her work.
• Maria Popova argues that her work is the antithesis of search, as it is a discovery of things that one would not have come across within their filter bubble.
• People who reach out to her are usually courteous and mindful of her requests, except for publicists.
• Maria Popova is selective about the people she surrounds herself with and has become a centripetal force with her inner circle of friends.
• When people pitch her something that is outside of her interests, she does not feel compelled to respond as they did not put in the effort to understand what she is interested in.
• Maria Popova suggests that people should not make decisions based on guilt or prestige, as these are both bad reasons to do things.
• When asking for donations, Maria Popova offers onetime contributions and memberships with donations of $7, $3, $10, or $25 a month.
• Maria Popova suggests using the question "What would I like to read as a reader?" when making decisions about the blog
• She found that recurring donations were 2 to 1 ratio to onetime donations
• She recommends two middle donation amounts ($3 and $10) if only two are to be chosen
• She suggests not making decisions based on prestige, status, money, or approval
• She recommends reading any Allen Watts piece
• Maria Popova expresses her gratitude for the show and its host, Tim Ferriss, and hopes that more people will operate out of a place of idealism and conviction.
• Tim Ferriss expresses his appreciation for Maria Popova and her work, and encourages people to check it out.
• He also wishes her luck in continuing to do what she's doing and to add repetitions to her pullups.
• Maria Popova thanks Tim Ferriss for having her on the show.