Tim Ferriss Quotes

Don’t confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple – many are just emotionally difficult to act upon.

His Message at a High School Commencement “You guys are programmed to succeed. The hardest thing you’re ever going to do in your life is fail at something, and if you don’t start failing at things, you will not live a full life. You’ll be living a cautious life on a path that you know is pretty much guaranteed to more or less work. That’s not getting the most out of this amazing world we live in. You have to do the hardest thing that you have not been prepared for in this school or any school: You have to be prepared to fail. That’s how you’re going to expand yourself and grow. As you work through that process of failure and learning, you will really deepen into the human being you’re capable of being.

"What do you want?" is too imprecise to produce a meaningful and actionable answer.

Adversity doesn’t build character; it reveals it.

You shouldn’t be trying to do more in each day, trying to fill every second with a work fidget of some type. It took me a long time to figure this out. I used to be very fond of the results-by-volume approach.

Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions. The options are almost limitless for creating “busyness.”

The first is the result of a decision to act — to do something. This type of mistake is made with incomplete information, as it’s impossible to have all the facts beforehand. This is to be encouraged. Fortune favors the bold. The second is the result of a decision of sloth — to not do something — wherein we refuse to change a bad situation out of fear despite having all the facts. This is how learning experiences become terminal punishments, bad relationships become bad marriages, and poor job choices become lifelong prison sentences.

Show up in every moment like you’re meant to be there, because your energy precedes anything you could possibly say.” Marie Forleo

Weirdness is why we adore our friends. . . . Weirdness is what bonds us to our colleagues. Weirdness is what sets us apart, gets us hired. Be your unapologetically weird self. In fact, being weird may even find you the ultimate happiness.

1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important. 2. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.

The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” — Lin Yutang

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

My original intention with The 4-Hour Workweek (4HWW), The 4-Hour Body (4HB), and The 4-Hour Chef (4HC) 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 4-Hour Workweek if you were to write it again? How would you update it?” Ditto for 4HB and 4HC. Tools of Titans contains most of the answers for all three.

If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in the dark with a mosquito.” — Betty Reese

Doing the Unrealistic Is Easier Than Doing the Realistic

In cooking — as in business and war — hope for the best but plan for the worst.