Tim Ferriss Quotes
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Learn the art of the pitch and of messaging.
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Learn to be difficult when it counts. In school as in life, having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time.
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Language learning deserves special mention. It is, bar none, the best thing you can do to hone clear thinking.
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The best way to counter-attack a hater is to make it blatantly obvious that their attack has had no impact on you.
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To have an uncommon lifestyle, you need to develop the uncommon habit of making decisions, both for yourself and for others.
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I'm not a big believer in long-term planning and far-off goals. In fact, I generally set 3-month and 6-month dreamlines. The variables change too much and in-the-future distance becomes an excuse for postponing action.
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I'll repeat something you might consider tattooing on your forehead: What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.
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Never check email first thing in the morning. Instead, complete your most important task before 11:00 A.M. to avoid using lunch or reading email as a postponement excuse.
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I will take as a given that, for most people, somewhere between six and seven billion of them, the perfect job is the one that takes the least time.
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The way we measure productivity is flawed. People checking their BlackBerry over dinner is not the measure of productivity.
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Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.
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There are two components that are fundamental to enjoy life and feel good about yourself: continual learning and service.
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Happiness can be bought with a bottle of wine and has become ambiguous through overuse.
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Dreamlining is so named because it applies timelines to what most would consider dreams.
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Everyone is going to binge on a diet, for instance, so plan for it, schedule it, and contain the damage.
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Doing less is not being lazy. Don't give in to a culture that values personal sacrifice over personal productivity.
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The biggest misconception about work is that you need to spend the majority of your time doing it.
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The problem with New Year's resolutions - and resolutions to 'get in better shape' in general, which are very amorphous - is that people try to adopt too many behavioral changes at once. It doesn't work. I don't care if you're a world-class CEO - you'll quit.
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I encourage active skepticism - when people are being skeptical because they're trying to identify the best course of action. They're trying to identify the next step for themselves or other people.
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The key to having more time is doing less, and there are two paths to get there, both of which should be used together: Define a short to-do list and define a not-to-do list.
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I'm often asked how I define "success." It's an overused term, but I fundamentally view this elusive beast as a combination of two things - achievement and appreciation. One isn't enough: Achievement without appreciation makes you ambitious but miserable. Appreciation without achievement makes you unambitious but happy.
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There is an infinite selection of things that I could test in life, so I generally will look for a critical mass of word that comes back to me. At this point I have hundreds of friends who are the best at what they do, arguably number one in the country or in the world. I will oftentimes just kind of throw a volley out to people, ask them what they're obsessing on or what they find interesting that's on the fringe. If the same answer comes back a few times, I'm like, "Okay."
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The goal is not to simply eliminate the bad, which does nothing more than leave you with a vacuum, but to pursue and experience the best in the world.
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I've seen the promised land, and there is good news. You can have it all.