Transcript
Tim Ferriss (0:00)
Optimal Minimal.
Derek Sivers (0:01)
At this altitude I can run flat.
Tim Ferriss (0:03)
Out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question now?
Derek Sivers (0:08)
Would have seen the perfect time.
BJ Miller (0:12)
I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over.
Derek Sivers (0:14)
A metal endoskeleton Ferris show.
Tim Ferriss (0:24)
Hello boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. This episode will share some of my favorite advice and profiles from the audiobook of Tools of Titans. You heard that right. Audiobook Thousands of you have asked for years for the audiobook versions of Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors and they are available today. Go to audible.com ferris for more details or to download either of them. Today's episode will focus on Tools of Titans and features the introduction of the book as well as a few of my favorite people. Profiles of Derek Sivers, B.J. miller and coach Christopher Sommer shows you the breadth of expertise and how different these profiles can also be. Just a few notes on format I recorded the introduction to the book and selected three fantastic top ranked narrators to handle the rest, along with some surprise appearances from friends of mine you might know. The short bios which you'll hear at the beginning of each profile are read by Kaleo Griffith. Ray Porter reads the bulk of each profile, including all of my words. Ray actually narrated my first book, the Four Hour Work Week. A lot of you love him already. He did an incredible job. Quotations from female guests are read by the wonderful Therese Plummer. This the audiobook of Tools of Titans contains the distilled tools and routines I've gathered after interviewing hundreds of world class performers on this podcast. Everything has been vetted and applied to my own life in some fashion. The techniques, the strategies and the philosophies in Tools of Titans have made me more effective, saved me years of wasted effort and frustration, and have helped me navigate, quite frankly, some very difficult periods of my life. Many periods of darkness and uncertainty. The advice has truly made me a happier, healthier person and changed my life. I hope the same for you. Please enjoy this episode and if you'd like to listen to 100 plus profiles and chapters from Tools of Titans, the audiobook, just head to audible.com ferris this episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their Travel Packs with me on the road so what is AG1? AG1 is a science driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics and whole food sourced nutrients In a single scoop. AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more Check it out go to drinkag1.com Tim that's drinkag1, the number one. Drinkag1.com Tim last time drinkag1.com Tim check it out this episode is brought to you by five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers and it's super super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday I send out five Bullet points super short of the coolest things I found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self experiments, hacks, trick and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers have asked me for something short and action packed for a very long time. Because after all the podcasts, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week. It's free. It's always going to be free and you can learn more at Tim Blog Friday. That's Tim Blog Friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with, and little known fact. I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. 5 Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out. Tim Blog Friday if you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can of course easily subscribe anytime. So easy peasy. Again, that's Tim Blog Friday and thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves ya, listen to this first. How to use this book out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center Big undreamed of things. The people on the edge see them first. Kurt Vonnegut Routine in An Intelligent man is a sign of ambition. WH Auden I'm a compulsive note taker. To wit, I have recorded nearly every workout since age 18 or so. Roughly 8ft of shelf space in my home is occupied by spine upon spine of notebook upon notebook. That, mind you, is one subject. It extends to dozens. Some people would call this ocd and many would probably consider it a manic wild goose chase. I view it simply. It is the collection of my life's recipes. My goal is to learn things once and use them forever. For instance, lets say I stumble upon a picture of myself from June 5, 2007, and I think I really wish I looked like that again. No problem. I'll crack open a dusty volume from 2007, review the eight weeks of training and food logs preceding June 5, repeat them, and voila, end up looking nearly the same as my younger self, minus the hair. It's not always that easy, but it often is. This book, like my others, is a compendium of recipes for high performance that I gathered for my own use. There's one big difference, though. I never planned on publishing this one. As I write this, I'm sitting in a cafe in Paris overlooking the Luxembourg Garden, just off of Rue St. Jacques. Rue St. Jacques is likely the oldest road in Paris, and it has a rich literary history. Victor Hugo lived a few blocks from where I'm sitting, Gertrude Stein drank coffee and F. Scott Fitzgerald socialized within a stone's throw. Hemingway wandered up and down the sidewalks, his books percolating in his mind. Wine no doubt percolating in his blood. I came to France to take a break from everything. No social media, no email, no social commitments, no set plans. Except one project. The month had been set aside to review all of the lessons I'd Learned from nearly 200 world class performers I'd interviewed on the Tim Ferriss show, which recently passed 400 million downloads. The guests included chess prodigies, movie stars, four star generals, pro athletes, and hedge fund managers. It was a motley crew. More than a handful of them had since become collaborators in business and creative projects spanning from investments to indie film, and as a result, I'd absorbed a lot of their wisdom outside of our recordings, weather over workouts, wine infused jam sessions, cat text message exchanges, dinners or late night phone calls. In every case, I'd gotten to know them well beyond the superficial headlines in the media. My life had already improved in every area as a result of the lessons I could remember. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. The majority of the gems were still lodged in thousands of pages of transcripts and hand scribbled notes. More than anything, I longed for the chance to distill everything into a playbook. So I'd set aside an entire month for review and, if I'm being honest, chocolate croissants to put together the ultimate Cliff Notes for myself. It would be the notebook to end all notebooks. Something that could help me in minutes but be read for a lifetime. That was the lofty goal at least, and I wasn't sure what the result would be. Within weeks of starting the experience exceeded all expectations. No matter the situation I found myself in, something in this book was able to help. Now, when I'm feeling stuck, trapped, desperate, angry, conflicted, or simply unclear, the first thing I do is flip through these pages with a strong cup of coffee in hand. So far, the needed medicine has popped out within 20 minutes of revisiting these friends who will now become your friends need a reassuring pat on the back? There's someone for that. An unapologetic slap in the face. Plenty of people for that too. Someone to explain why your fears are unfounded or why your excuses are bullshit. Done. There are a lot of powerful quotes, but this book is much more than a compilation of quotes. It is a toolkit for changing your life. There are many books full of interviews. This is different because I don't view myself as an interviewer. I view myself as an experimenter. If I can't test something or replicate results in the messy reality of everyday life, I'm not interested. Everything in these pages has been vetted, explored and applied to my own life in some fashion. I've used dozens of these tactics and philosophies in high stakes negotiations, high risk environments and large business dealings. The lessons have made me millions of dollars and saved me years of wasted effort and frustration. They work when you need them most. Some applications are obvious at first glance, while others are subtle and will provoke a holy shit, now I get it realization weeks later while you're daydreaming in the shower or about to fall asleep. Many of the one liners teach volumes. Some summarize excellence in an entire field in one sentence. As Josh Waitzkin, chess prodigy and the inspiration behind Searching for Bobby Fischer might put it, these bite sized learnings are a way to learn the macro from the micro. The process of piecing them together was revelatory. If I thought I saw the Matrix before I was mistaken or I was only seeing 10% of it. Still, even that 10% islands of notes on individual mentors had already changed my life and helped me to 10x my results. But after revisiting more than 100 minds as part of the same fabric, things got very interesting very quickly. For the movie nerds among you, it was like the end of the Sixth Sense or the Usual Suspects. The red doorknob, the fucking Kobayashi coffee cup. How did I not notice that it was right in front of me the whole time? You get the idea. To help you see the same, I've done my best to weave patterns together throughout the book, noting where guests have complementary habits, beliefs and recommendations. The completed jigsaw puzzle is much greater than the sum of its parts. What makes these people different? Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. Pierre Marc Gaston these world class performers do not have superpowers. The rules they have crafted for themselves allow the bending of reality to such an extent that it may seem that way. But they've learned how to do this, and so can you. These rules, if you want to think of them that way, are often uncommon habits and bigger questions. In a surprising number of cases, the power is in the absurd. The more absurd, the more seemingly impossible the question, the more profound the answers. Take for instance, a question that Cyril billionaire Peter Thiel likes to ask himself and others. If you have a 10 year plan of how to get somewhere, you should ask why can't you do this in six months? For purposes of illustration, I might reword that to what might you do to accomplish your 10 year goals in the next six months if you had a gun against your head? Now let's pause. Do I actually expect you to take 10 seconds to ponder this and then magically accomplish 10 years worth of dreams in the next few months? No, I don't. But I do expect that the question will productively break your mind like a butterfly shattering a chrysalis to emerge with new capabilities. The so called normal systems that you have in place, the social rules you've forced upon yourself, the standard frameworks, they don't work. When answering a question like this, you are forced to shed artificial constraints, like shedding a skin, to realize that you had the ability to renegotiate your reality all along. It just takes practice. My suggestion is that you spend real time with the questions you find most ridiculous. In this book, 30 minutes of stream of consciousness journaling, which we'll talk about later, could change your life. On top of that, while the world is a gold mine. You need to go digging in other people's heads to unearth riches. Questions are your pickaxes and competitive advantage. This book will give you an arsenal to choose from Performance Enhancing Details when organizing all of the material for myself, I didn't want an onerous 37 step program. I wanted low hanging fruit with immediate returns. Think of the bite sized rules within these pages as PEDs performance enhancing details. They can be added to any training regimen, for instance different careers, personal preferences, unique responsibilities, etc. To pour gasoline on the fire of progress. Fortunately, 10x results don't always require 10x effort. Big changes can come, and in very small packages to dramatically change your life. You don't need to run a 100 mile race, get a PhD or completely reinvent yourself. It's the small things done consistently that are the big things. For example, Red teaming once a quarter Tara Brak's Guided Meditations, Strategic Fasting or exogenous ketones, et cetera tool is defined broadly in this book. It includes routines, books, common self talk, supplements, favorite questions, and much more. What do they have in common? In this book you'll naturally look for common habits and recommendations, and you should Here are a few patterns, some odder than others. More than 80% of the interviewees have some form of daily mindfulness or meditation practice. A surprising number of males, but not females over 45, never eat breakfast or eat only the scantiest of fare, for example Laird Hamilton, Malcolm Gladwell, General Stanley McChrystal. Many use the chilipad device for cooling at bedtime. Rave reviews of the books Sapiens, Poor Charlie's Almanac, Influence and Man's Search for Meaning, among others. The habit of listening to single songs on repeat. For focus. Nearly everyone has done some form of spec work, in other words, completing projects on their own time and dime, then submitting them to prospective buyers. The belief that failure is not durable, for instance Robert Rodriguez or variants thereof. Almost every guest has been able to take obvious weaknesses and turn them into huge competitive advantages. For instance Arnold Schwarzenegger. Of course I will help you connect these dots, but that's less than half the value of this book. Some of the most encouraging workarounds are found in the outliers. I want you to look for the black sheep who fit your unique idiosyncrasies. Keep an eye out for the non traditional paths, like Shay Carl's journey from manual laborer to YouTube star to co founder of a startup sold for nearly $1 billion. The variation is the consistency as a software engineer might say that's not a bug, it's a feature. So borrow liberally, combine uniquely and create your own bespoke blueprint. This book is a buffet. Here's how to get the most out of it. Rule number one Skip liberally. I want you to skip anything that doesn't grab you. This book should be fun to read and it's a buffet to choose from. Don't suffer through anything. If you hate shrimp, don't eat the goddamn shrimp. Treat it as a Choose your own adventure guide as that's exactly how I've written it. My goal is for each reader to like 50%, love 25% and never forget 10%. And here's why. For the millions who've heard the podcast and the dozens who've proofread this book, the 502510 highlights are completely different for every person. It's blown my mind. I've even had multiple guests in this book, people who are the best at what they do proofread the same profile Answering my question of what 10% would you absolutely keep and which 10% would you absolutely cut? Oftentimes, the 10% must keep of one person was the exact must cut of someone else. This is not one size fits all. I expect you to discard plenty. Read what you enjoy. Rule number two Skip, but do so intelligently. Take a brief mental note of anything you skip. Perhaps it's skipping and glossing over precisely these topics or questions that has created blind spots, bottlenecks, and unresolved issues in your life. That was certainly true for me. If you decide to skip something, note it, return to it later at some point and ask yourself, why did I skip this? Did it offend? You seem beneath, you seem too difficult. And did you arrive at that by thinking it through? Or is it a reflection of biases inherited from your parents and other people? Very often our beliefs are not our own. This type of practice is how you create yourself instead of seeking to discover yourself. There's value in the latter, but it's mostly past tense. It's a rear view mirror. Looking out the windshield is how you get where you want to go. Just remember two principles. I was recently standing in place Louis Aragon, a shaded outdoor nook on the River Seine, having a picnic with writing students from the Paris American Academy. One woman pulled me aside and asked what I hoped to convey in this book at the core. Seconds later, we were pulled back into the fray as the attendees were all taking turns talking about the circuitous paths that brought them there that day. Nearly everyone had a story of wanting to come to Paris for years, in some cases 30, 40 years, but assuming it was impossible listening to their stories. I pulled out a scrap of paper and jotted down my answer to her question. In this book, at its core, I want to convey the number one Success, however you define it is achievable if you collect the right field tested beliefs and habits. Someone else has done your version of success before, and often many have done something similar. But you might ask, what about a first like colonizing Mars? There are still recipes. Look at empire building of other types. Look at the biggest decisions in the life of Robert Moses in the book the Power Broker. Or simply find someone who stepped up to do great things that were deemed impossible at the time, for example Walt Disney. There is shared DNA you can borrow. Number two, the superheroes you have in your mind, idols, icons, titans, billionaires, et cetera are nearly all walking flaws who've maximized one or two strengths. Humans are imperfect creatures. You don't succeed because you have no weaknesses. You succeed because you find your unique strengths and focus on developing habits around them. To make this crystal clear, I've deliberately included two sections in this book that will make you think, wow, Tim Ferriss is a mess. How the hell does he ever get anything done? Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. The heroes in this book are no different. Everyone struggles. Take solace in that. A few important notes on Structure this book is comprised of three Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise. Of course, there's tremendous overlap across the sections as the pieces are interdependent. In fact, you could think of the three as a tripod upon which life is balanced. One needs all three to have any sustainable success or happiness. Wealthy in the context of this book also means much more than money. It extends to abundance in time, relationships, and more. My original intention with the Four Hour Workweek, the Four Hour Body, and the Four Hour Chef was to create a trilogy themed after Ben Franklin's famous quote, early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. People constantly ask me, what would you put in the Four Hour Workweek if you were to write it again? How would you update it? Ditto for the Four Hour Body and the Four Hour Chef. Tools of Titans contains most of the answers for all three extended quotes. Before writing this book, I called Mason Curry, author of Daily Rituals, which profiles the rituals of 161 creatives like Franz Kafka and Pablo Picasso. I asked him what his best decisions were related to the book. Mason responded with, I let my subjects voices come through as much as possible, and I think that was one of the things that I did right. Often it wasn't the details of their routine habits so much as how they talked about them that was interesting. This is a critical observation and exactly why most books of quotes fail to have any real impact. Take, for example, a one liner like what's on the other side of Fear? Nothing from Jamie Foxx. It's memorable and you might guess at the profound underlying meaning. I'd still wager you'd forget it within a week. But what if I made it infinitely more powerful by including Jamie's own explanation of why he uses that maxim to teach his kids confidence? The context and the original language teaches you how to think like a world class performer, not just regurgitate quotes. This is the key meta skill we're aiming for. To that end, you'll see a lot of extended quotes and stories how to Listen to the Quotes One of my podcast guests, also one of the smartest people I know, was shocked when I showed him his raw transcript. Wow, he said. I generally like to think of myself as a decently smart guy, but I use past, present and future tense like they're the same fucking thing. It makes me sound like a complete moron. Transcripts can be unforgiving. I've read my own, so I know how bad it can be. In the heat of the moment, grammar can go out the window to be replaced by false starts and sentence fragments. Everyone starts an ungodly number of sentences with and and so I and millions of others tend to use and I was like instead of and I said many of us mix up plural and singular. This all works fine in normal conversation, but it can hiccup for an audiobook. Quotes have therefore been edited in some cases for clarity, length, and as a courtesy to listeners and guests alike. I did my best to preserve the spirit and point of quotes while making them as smart and listenable as possible. Sometimes I keep it fast and loose to preserve the kinetic energy and emotion of the moment. Other times I smooth out the edges, including my own stammering. If anything sounds silly or off, assume it was my mistake. Everyone in this book is amazing and I've done my best to showcase that patterns where guests have related recommendations or philosophies. I've noted that, for instance, if Jane Doe tells a story about the value of testing higher prices, I might add. Listen to Marc Andreessen, since his answer to if you could have a billboard anywhere, what would you put on it was raise prices, which he explains in depth humor. I've included ample doses of the ridiculous. First of all, if we're serious all of the time, we'll wear out before we get the truly serious stuff done. Second, if this book were all stern looks and no winks, all productivity and no grab assing, you'd remember very little. I agree with Tony Robbins, who's in this book that information without emotion isn't retained. Look up von Restorff effect and primacy and recency effect for more science. But this book has been deliber constructed to maximize your retention. Which leads us to spirit animals. Yes, spirit animals. There wasn't room for photographs in the print edition of this book, but I wanted some sort of illustrations to keep things fun. Seemed like a lost cause. But then, after a glass or four of wine, I recalled that one of my guests, Alexis Ohanian, likes to ask potential hires, what's your spirit animal? Eureka. So in this audiobook version, you'll hear spirit animals for anyone who would humor me and play along. The best part? Dozens of people took the question very seriously. Extended explanations, emotional changes of heart, and Venn diagrams ensued. Questions poured in Would a mythological creature be acceptable? Can I be a plant instead? Alas, I couldn't get a hold of everyone. So these spirit animals are sprinkled throughout the book like Scooby Snacks. In a book full of practicality, treat these like little rainbows of absurdity. People had fun with it. Non Profile Content and Tim Ferriss Chapters that's me. In all sections, there are multiple non profile pieces by guests and yours truly. These are typically intended to expand upon key principles and tools mentioned by multiple people. URLs, websites and social media I've omitted most URLs as outdated. URLs. That means website address are nothing but frustrating for everyone. For nearly anything mentioned, assume that I've chosen wording that will allow you to find it easily on Google or Amazon. All full podcast episodes can be found at Tim Blog Podcast. Just search the guest's name and the extended audio. Complete show notes, links and resources will pop up like warm toast on a cold morning in nearly every guest's profile. I also indicate where you can best interact with them on social media. Your sendoff the three tools that allow all the rest Siddhartha by Hermann Hess is recommended by many guests in this book. There is one specific takeaway that Naval Ravikant has reinforced with me several times on our long walks over coffee. The protagonist, Siddhartha, a monk who looks like a beggar, has come to the city and falls in love with a famous courtesan named Kamala. He attempts to court her and and she asks, what do you have? A well known merchant similarly asks, what can you give that you have learned? His answer is the same in both cases. So I've included the latter story here. Siddhartha ultimately acquires all that he wants. If you are without possessions, how can you give Siddhartha? Everyone gives what he has. The soldier gives strength, the merchant goods, the teacher instruction, the farmer rice, the fisherman, fish merchant. Very well. And what can you give? What have you learned that you can give Siddhartha? I can think, I can wait. I can fast. Is that all, Siddhartha? I think that is all. And of what use are they, for example, fasting? What good is that, Siddhartha? It is of great value, sir. If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do. If, for instance, Siddhartha had not learned to fast, he would have had to seek some kind of work today, either with you or elsewhere, for hunger would have driven him. But as it is, Siddhartha can wait calmly. He is not impatient, he is not in need. He can ward off hunger for a long time and laugh at it. I think of Sidharth as answers often and in the following I can think equals having good rules for decision making and having good questions you can ask yourself and others. I can wait. Being able to plan long term, play the long game and not misallocate your resources. I can fast Being able to withstand difficulties and disaster, training yourself to be uncommonly resilient and to have a high pain tolerance. This book will help you develop all three. I created Tools of Titans because it's the book that I've wanted my entire life. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed writing it.