Tim Ferriss

Advice to your 20-year-old self? “I would say, ‘Write everything down because it’s all very fleeting.’ I would say, ‘Keep a journal,’ which I have but I would have been more meticulous. Then I would say, ‘Don’t bow to the gatekeepers at the head of, in my case, show business, but at the gate of any business or any endeavor.’ Don’t bow to the gatekeepers because I think, in essence, there are no gatekeepers. You are the gatekeeper. . . . “Don’t waste your time on marketing, just try to get better. . . . “And also, it’s not about being good; it’s about being great. Because what I find, the older I get, is that a lot of people are good, and a lot of people are smart, and a lot of people are clever. But not a lot of people give you their soul when they perform.

Sparta, Rome, the knights of Europe, the samurai . . . worshipped strength. Because it is strength that makes all other values possible.

The fishing is best where the fewest go,

But I will say this: the more clear I am about what my goals are, the more easily I can say no.

The opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression.

In other words, you can spend all day undermining other people, and even if you’re right, who cares? Anybody can talk about why something’s bad. Try doing something good.

So red teaming is: You take people who aren’t wedded to the plan and [ask them,] ‘How would you disrupt this plan or how would you defeat this plan?’ If you have a very thoughtful red team, you’ll produce stunning results.

Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued. . . . Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run — in the long-run, I say! — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.” — Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

The very word ‘success’ has become contaminated by our ideas of someone extraordinary, very rich, etc., and that’s really unhelpful…. Ultimately, to be properly successful is to be at peace as well.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? I have a friend at the gym who knew Jack LaLanne (Google him if the name is unfamiliar). Jack used to say it’s okay to take a day off from working out. But on that day, you’re not allowed to eat. That’s the short way of saying you’re not really allowed to get unfocused. Take a vacation. Gather yourself. But know that the only reason you’re here on this planet is to follow your star and do what the Muse tells you. It’s amazing how a good day’s work will get you right back to feeling like yourself.

Often, all that stands between you and what you want is a better set of questions.

Ben Franklin’s excellent advice: “If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.

Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined. Otherwise, you waste someone else's time instead of your own, which now wastes your hard-earned cash. How's that for incentive to be effective and efficient?

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. — ALBERT EINSTEIN

If you don’t believe in an afterlife, then you [should realize] that this is such a short and precious life, it is really important that you don’t spend it being unhappy. There is no excuse for spending most of your life in misery. You’ve only got 70 years out of the 50 billion or however long the universe is going to be around.