By 2004, Tim Ferriss was running an online brain and body supplements company that was grossing $40,000 a month. He was his own boss. He was making a lot of money. Things seemed good until one day his girlfriend handed him a plaque that read “Business Hours End at 5p.m.!” Suddenly, it dawned on Tim that things were actually very, very bad. What did success matter if you didn’t have the time to enjoy your life? So, he booked himself a ticket to Europe and promptly had a nervous breakdown. He didn’t know what to do with himself. His entire identity was wrapped up in his work. It didn’t matter that he was his own boss, because he still had no freedom. And so, Tim embarked on a quest to figure out how to get maximum results in the minimum amount of time. The result has been the incredibly successful 4-hour series of books. The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef have all become bestsellers and been translated into dozens of languages. Ferriss’ website has a million visitors a month. Now, with The Tim Ferriss Experiment, Ferriss gives himself one week to master skills using the techniques he lays out in the 4-Hour series. He has one week to learn a language. He has one week to build a business. He has one week to learn parkour. The disciplines are wildly different for a reason. They offer Ferriss the chance to show that all learning works in the same way and that the set of strategies Ferriss has developed to learn the maximum amount in the minimum amount of time can be applied to any and every skill. In this episode, Tim, Bryan and Hunter discuss Ferriss’ meta-learning strategies, what makes an effective teacher and how we can all get the most out of our most valuable resource: time.

Tim Ferris blogs at http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/. You can follow him on twitter at @tferriss. His books are all available on Amazon. And although you can watch The Tim Ferriss Experiment pretty much anywhere, he especially appreciates views and reviews on iTunes, where, by the way, the first episode—where he has one week to get good enough at drums to play in concert with the rock band Foreigner—is free.