Fear-Setting: The Most Important Exercise I Still Do Today | Tim Ferriss

Here is a brief summary of the key points from the transcript: - The speaker discusses an exercise called "fear setting" which helps analyze and overcome fears in order to make important life decisions. - The full details of the fear setting exercise can be found in the speaker's TED talk and blog posts. - An important but underappreciated component of fear setting is writing down not just the risks/costs of action, but also the potential costs of inaction - i.e. what will it cost if you don't make a change. - For inaction costs, make detailed lists of what will happen in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, etc if no change is made. Consider costs for yourself and others in your life. - Focusing on the guaranteed costs of inaction can provide motivation to take uncomfortable actions and make difficult life changes that have been put off. - The speaker uses this exercise at least quarterly and sometimes monthly when facing decisions that cause discomfort.

The most important exercise that I do still to this day, I would say at least once a quarter, is something called fear setting, and it's intended to help you overcome or at least analyze the fears you have so you can take important steps in different directions. Start new projects, end projects, start relationships, end relationships, make those very seemingly difficult decisions for which there is no good timing. Fear setting is what it's called. If you want the full exercise, you can go to Tim Dot blog Ted I also give a TED talk about this, so you'll see in video there are 4 million plus views at this point, and also in text, exactly all the details for how to do this. I'm just going to point out one piece that is, I think, under examined and underappreciated. And if you had to pick just one tiny component of the exercise, perhaps this would be it. And that is not just looking at the costs and risks of action, doing whatever it is that you're considering doing, but looking at and writing down the potential costs of inaction. All right, staying still, not changing. So if you're considering, say, quitting your job, you might look at all of the various worst case scenarios, the terrible things that could happen and how to offset them. So you'd make a list defining all of the specific things that could happen that would be bad, that would cause you some type of anxiety, depression, fear, et cetera, whatever it might be, loss. What you might do, though, instead, since that might be very obvious, is to write down a similar list in detail. The specificity is important. Of all of the things that it will cost you, all of the things that will happen if you don't change, if you stay in your job. So if you stay, for instance, in that relationship, if you telescope out, and I recommend telescoping out and doing for different timeframes. All right, so in six months, if you don't change anything, what will it cost you? Make a list. In twelve months, what will it cost you? What will it cost the people you care for? Make a list. Right, 18 months, three years, you could do those four and just write down for you, for the people you care for, for others, what will it cost if you don't take that action? And this is very simply not just looking at the risks and costs of action, but looking at the risks and costs which are probably in many ways guaranteed. This is not guesswork. And using that as an impetus, using that as a list of reasons to take uncomfortable action. So that is one, I think, under examined piece I would consider spending time on. I certainly spend time on it at least once a quarter, very often once a month if I'm making a lot of decisions that cause me discomfort that I've been putting off and so on. And if you want more detail, just go to Tim blog Ted and you can run through the entire exercise.