Tools of Titans
Tim Ferriss
Highlights
- In our patients, about 75% report experiencing an intense and profound sense of awe, divine presence, peace, joy, and bliss that transcends time and space. People often describe their 5-MeO experience as one of the peak transformational and spiritual moments of their entire lives.
- The Top Mobilizations to Do Every Day “Here are a few things you should probably do every day: Everyone can benefit from something that looks like the cow stretch (also sometimes called “cat-camel” in yoga classes). It’s a low-level static stretch that gets you into this extension pattern, and out of the other pattern of sitting in the rounded flexion position. Spend as much time in a lunge as you can. [TF: One simple way to check this box prior to workouts is Eric Cressey’s “walking Spiderman” exercise. I touch my inside elbow to the ground before switching sides. This is also a game-changer for hip flexibility in AcroYoga.] ‘Smash’ your gut (i.e., roll on it) for downregulation before bed with a medicine ball. [TF: This really works as a sleep aid. My favorite tool was actually designed by Kelly, the MobilityWOD Supernova (120 mm). Amelia Boone (page 2) always travels with one.] Internal shoulder rotation is so crucial. Doing the Burgener warmup will help show you if you have full internal rotation of your shoulder.
- The Keto “Frappuccino” He often works with bodybuilder Dave “Jumbo” Palumbo on diet in preparation for WrestleMania, WWE’s largest event of the year (more than 100,000 live attendees in 2016). Dave has Paul follow the ketogenic diet, and Paul has developed a healthy “frappuccino” that suits his needs: “I use [Palumbo’s] protein powder, by Species Nutrition. Every morning, I roll downstairs and: 2 scoops of whey protein [Isolyze], ice, a bunch of powdered Starbucks coffee, some macadamia nut oil, and I make a shake. That’s the start.”
- Overcoming Jet Lag During his peak travel period, Paul traveled 260+ days per year, performing in a different city each night. Here is one of his rules: “When I landed, I would check into the hotel. The second we checked in, I’d ask them: ‘Is the gym open? Can I go train?’ Even if it was to get on a bike and ride for 15 minutes to reset things. I learned early that it seemed any time I did that, I didn’t get jet lag.
- The opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression."
- Tetris as Therapy Have trouble getting to sleep? Try 10 minutes of Tetris. Recent research has demonstrated that Tetris—or Candy Crush Saga or Bejeweled—can help overwrite negative visualization, which has applications for addiction (such as overeating), preventing PTSD, and, in my case, onset insomnia. As Jane explains, due to the visually intensive, problem-solving characteristics of these games: “You see visual flashbacks [e.g., the blocks falling or the pieces swapping]. They occupy the visual processing center of your brain so that you cannot imagine the thing that you’re craving [or obsessing over, which are also highly visual]. This effect can last 3 or 4 hours. It also turns out that if you play Tetris after witnessing a traumatic event [ideally within 6 hours, but it’s been demonstrated at 24 hours], it prevents flashbacks and lowers symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.”
- “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe.” —Abraham Lincoln
- Joy on Demand, is one of the most practical books on meditation that I’ve found.
- I learned this from Mingyur Rinpoche, whose book, The Joy of Living, I most highly recommend. The idea is to do less formal practice than you are capable of. For example, if you can sit in mindfulness for 5 minutes before it feels like a chore, then don’t sit for 5 minutes, just do 3 or 4 minutes, perhaps a few times a day.
- My Two Favorite Exercises from Meng, in His Own Words 1. Just Note Gone There is a simple practice that can greatly enhance your ability to notice the absence of pain [whether physical, mental, or emotional], though it isn’t only concerned with pain.
- Informal Practice: Wishing for Random People to Be Happy During working hours or school hours, randomly identify two people who walk past you or who are standing or sitting around you. Secretly wish for them to be happy. Just think to yourself, “I wish for this person to be happy, and I wish for that person to be happy.” That is the entire practice. Don’t do anything; don’t say anything; just think. This is entirely a thinking exercise. If you prefer, you can do this at any time of the day for any amount of time. You can also do it at any other place. If there is nobody present, you can bring someone to mind for the purpose of this exercise.
- Formal Practice: Attending to the Joy of Loving-Kindness Sit in any posture that allows you to be alert and relaxed at the same time, whatever that means to you. You may keep your eyes open or closed. Repeat this cycle once per minute: Bring to mind someone for whom you can very easily feel loving-kindness. Wish for him or her to be happy. The joy of loving-kindness may arise, and if that happens, bring full attention to the joy until it fades away. For the rest of the minute, just rest the mind. When the next minute begins, start the cycle again, for a total of 3 minutes. You can do this for however many minutes you choose. You don’t have to stick to a once-per-minute regimen—feel free to rest your mind for as long as you want between each cycle. The timing is not important; the only thing that is important is attending to the joy of loving-kindness, that is all.
- impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals.
- “If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn’t plan your mission properly.” —Colonel David Hackworth
- “I had a phrase I kept repeating in my head over and over again, which was, ‘Tonight, I will be in my bed. Tonight, I will be in my bed. Tonight, I will be in my bed.’ . . . It was something I repeated to remind me that the pain of what I was going through was temporary and that, no matter what, at the end of that day, I would be in my bed that night.”
- “If [more] information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”
- Once You Have Some Success—If It’s Not a “Hell, Yes!” It’s a “No”
- “Even when everything is going terribly, and I have no reason to be confident, I just decide to be."
- “Everyone is interesting. If you’re ever bored in a conversation, the problem’s with you, not the other person.
- Is There a Quote That Guides Your Life? “It’s a belief: Life is always happening for us, not to us. It’s our job to find out where the benefit is. If we do, life is magnificent.”
- “‘Stressed’ is the achiever word for ‘fear.’” “Losers react, leaders anticipate.” “Mastery doesn’t come from an infographic. What you know doesn’t mean shit. What do you do consistently?”
- “And, as I’ve always said, there’s no excuse not to do 10 minutes. If you don’t have 10 minutes, you don’t have a life.”
- His former chief of staff has told stories of Reid responding to an insult with “I’m perfectly willing to accept that” and moving on,
- One of my all-time favorite quotes from dear Ludwig is: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
- “Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.”—Thomas Edison
- Reid’s First Principle Is Speed “We agreed I was going to make judgment calls on a range of issues on his behalf without checking with him. He told me, ‘In order to move fast, I expect you’ll make some foot faults. I’m okay with an error rate of 10 to 20%—times when I would have made a different decision in a given situation—if it means you can move fast.’ I felt empowered to make decisions with this ratio in mind, and it was incredibly liberating.”
- So I think trends are often things to avoid. What I prefer over trends is a sense of mission. That you are working on a unique problem that people are not solving elsewhere. “When Elon Musk started SpaceX, they set out the mission to go to Mars. You may agree or disagree with that as a mission statement, but it was a problem that was not going to be solved outside of SpaceX. All of the people working there knew that, and it motivated them tremendously.”
- “If a narrative isn’t working, well then, really, why are you using it? The narrative isn’t done to you; the narrative is something that you choose. Once we can dig deep and find a different narrative, then we ought to be able to change the game.”
- “Don’t retreat into story.”
- “Losers have goals. Winners have systems."
- I would consider myself a world champion at avoiding stress at this point in dozens of different ways. A lot of it is just how you look at the world, but most of it is really the process of diversification. I’m not going to worry about losing one friend if I have a hundred, but if I have two friends I’m really going to be worried. I’m not going to worry about losing my job because my one boss is going to fire me, because I have thousands of bosses at newspapers everywhere. One of the ways to not worry about stress is to eliminate it. I don’t worry about my stock picks because I have a diversified portfolio. Diversification works in almost every area of your life to reduce your stress.
- “Good content is the best SEO,” as Robert Scoble originally told me.
- “If I’ve learned anything from podcasting, it’s don’t be afraid to do something you’re not qualified to do.”
- When you complain, nobody wants to help you
- If you spend your time focusing on the things that are wrong, and that’s what you express and project to people you know, you don’t become a source of growth for people, you become a source of destruction for people.
- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. TF: That last Genghis Khan book has been recommended to me by several billionaires.
- You’re not nearly as good or as important as you think you are; 2) you have an attitude that needs to be readjusted; 3) most of what you think you know or most of what you learned in books or in school is out of date or wrong.
- “Do people you respect or care about leave hateful comments on the Internet?” (No.) “Do you really want to engage with people who have infinite time on their hands?” (No.)
- I was told my goal should be “two crappy pages a day.” That’s it. If you hit two crappy pages, even if you never use them, you can feel “successful” for the day. Sometimes you barely eke out two pages, and they are truly terrible. But at least 50% of the time, you’ll produce perhaps 5, 10, or even—on the rare miracle day—20 pages. Draft ugly and edit pretty.
- “No matter what the situation may be, the right course of action is always compassion and love.”
- my favorite museum in the world is the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo, created in the “Mitaka Forest” by Miyazaki.
- “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’”—Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955–1967
- future. After all, the dirty little secret is that every success was almost a failure. Timing and uncontrollable circumstances play more of a role than any of us care to admit.
- “Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month,” he posited, “the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this—or the boy who had . . . received a Rodgers’ penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers?”
- As Pico Iyer pointed out, the act of quitting “means not giving up, but moving on; changing direction not because something doesn’t agree with you, but because you don’t agree with something. It’s not a complaint, in other words, but a positive choice, and not a stop in one’s journey, but a step in a better direction. Quitting—whether a job or a habit—means taking a turn so as to be sure you’re still moving in the direction of your dreams.” In this way, quitting should never be seen as the end of something grudging and unpleasant. Rather, it’s a vital step in beginning something new and wonderful.
- If you find yourself saying, “But I’m making so much money” about a job or project, pay attention. “But I’m making so much money,” or “But I’m making good money” is a warning sign that you’re probably not on the right track or, at least, that you shouldn’t stay there for long. Money can always be regenerated. Time and reputation cannot.
- When possible, always give the money to charity, as it allows you to interact with people well above your pay grade.
- Schedule (and, if possible, pay for) things in advance to prevent yourself from backing out. I’ve applied this to early morning AcroYoga sessions, late-night gymnastics training, archery lessons, etc. Make commitments in a high-energy state so that you can’t back out when you’re in a low-energy state.
- B.J. also recommended Daily Rituals by Mason Currey for anyone who would enjoy seeing the daily routines of legends like Steve Jobs, Charles Darwin, and Charles Dickens. “It is so reassuring to see that everyone has their own system, and how dysfunctional a lot of them are.”
- “The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” —Lin Yutang
- One of my favorite time-management essays is “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” by Paul Graham of Y Combinator fame. Give it a read.
- the marginal minute now matters more to me than the marginal dollar (a lesson learned from Naval Ravikant).
- “Make your peace with the fact that saying ‘no’ often requires trading popularity for respect.” —Greg McKeown, Essentialism
- “Guilt [is] interesting because guilt is the flip side of prestige, and they’re both horrible reasons to do things.”
- “Ours is a culture where we wear our ability to get by on very little sleep as a kind of badge of honor that symbolizes work ethic, or toughness, or some other virtue—but really, it’s a total profound failure of priorities and of self-respect.”
- Out of more than 4,600 articles on Brain Pickings, what are Maria’s starting recommendations? “The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long” “How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love” “9 Learnings from 9 Years of Brain Pickings” Anything about Alan Watts: “Alan Watts has changed my life. I’ve written about him quite a bit.
- ‘Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.’ I literally have this on my coffee table so I see it every single day.”
- “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” —Mark Twain
- the worst that can happen is that I’d have a backpack and a sleeping bag, and I’d be eating oatmeal. And I’d be fine.’”
- “The difference between the people you admire and everybody else [is that the former are] the people who read.”
- Need to Get Unstuck? Make Your Task Laughably Small
- Don Wildman. “He’s 82 years old, and he did 23 pull-ups on the beach the other day. He’s in the Senior Olympics. He retired . . . because he wanted to spend his days enjoying life and exercising. He’s one of the most inspiring, uplifting, great, successful people on so many levels.”
- But what of the remaining 20%? Nearly all of them have meditation-like activities. One frequent pattern is listening to a single track or album on repeat, which can act as an external mantra for aiding focus and present-state awareness.
- “There are only four stories: a love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power, and the journey. Every single book that is in the bookstore deals with these four archetypes, these four themes.” “The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.”
- Any quotes you live by, or think of often? “Honor those who seek the truth, beware of those who’ve found it"
- Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” —Mark Twain.
- 10% of people will find a way to take anything personally. Expect it and treat it as math.
- “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”
- “The first rule of handling conflict is don’t hang around people who are constantly engaging in conflict.
- Anger is a hot coal that you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at someone else (Buddhist saying)
- 75% of success is staying calm and not losing your nerve.
- “Did Shakespeare Invent Love?” by Nerdwriter.
- What might I put in place to allow me to go off the grid for 4 to 8 weeks, with no phone or email?
- Morning Pages by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way.LOCATION: 10339
- “Enjoy it.” —the best answer I’ve heard to what I always ask close friends: “What should I do with my life?”
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