Tim Ferriss Quotes

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.

Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.

One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity. — BRUCE LEE

Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask. After all, conscious thinking is largely asking and answering questions in your own head.

Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity. You’ll avoid the tough decisions, and you’ll avoid confronting the people who need to be confronted.” — Colin Powell

If you let pride stop you, you will hate life

Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitant to get in the way if you’re moving.

At least three time per day at scheduled times, he had to ask himself the following question: Am I being productive or just active? Charney captured the essence of this with less-abstract wording: Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important? He eliminated all of the activities he used as crutches and began to focus on demonstrating results instead of showing dedication. Dedication is often just meaningless work in disguise. Be ruthless and cut the fat.

Less Is Not Laziness
Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness. This is hard for most to accept, because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity.

What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn’t have any doubt — it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn’t want to go anywhere else.” — Hal Boyle.

To enjoy life, you don't need fancy nonsense, but you do need to control your time and realize that most things just aren't as serious as you make them out to be.

What is the 20% of my belongings that I use 80% of the time? Eliminate the other 80% in clothing, magazines, books, and all else. Be ruthless - you can always repurchase things you can't live without.

Calm Is Contagious” This is another of Pavel’s favorite quotes. Here is an elaboration from a speech by Rorke Denver, former Navy SEAL commander: “A master chief, the senior enlisted rank in the Navy — who was like a god to us — told us he was giving us an invaluable piece of advice that he’d learned from another master chief during the Vietnam War. He said, ‘This is the best thing you’re ever going to learn in SEAL training.’ We were excited to learn what it was, and he told us that when you’re a leader, people are going to mimic your behavior, at a minimum. . . . It’s a guarantee. So here’s the key piece of advice, this is all he said: ‘Calm is contagious.’” *

If you're gonna write a book, write a fucking book.

If this cannot be your top priority for the next year, don't do a book. There is a glut of mediocrity in the world. Please don't contribute to it.

If you put out a book that's a C-minus, you're gonna have to live with that C-minus for the rest of your life.

So if you're gonna do a book, do a fucking book. Take it seriously.

Recounting advice from Michael Gerber received before writing The 4-Hour Workweek

Good Stories Always Beat Good Spreadsheets” “Whether you are raising money, pitching your product to customers, selling the company, or recruiting employees, never forget that underneath all the math and the MBA bullshit talk, we are all still emotionally driven human beings. We want to attach ourselves to narratives. We don’t act because of equations. We follow our beliefs. We get behind leaders who stir our feelings. In the early days of your venture, if you find someone diving too deep into the numbers, that means they are struggling to find a reason to deeply care about you.