Wisdom from Tim Ferriss
We moved to the suburbs outside New York two years ago and found myself with no commissions for months. We settled into this beautiful old house and I would spend my days looking out window at the tree-filled yard, it was misery in paradise.
Fear and boredom are the enemies when there is no work, so I got to reading. I picked up Tim Ferriss’s then recent book “Tribe of Mentors” at the library and devoured it, making notes of some of my favorite quotes along the way. I followed up with his previous (and similar) volume, “Tools of Titans.” Many of the notes are more well-word phrasings of things I already understood, others wisely flipped what I thought that I knew.
I ended up with thirteen pages of notes, then selected my favorites and put them onto one document, shrunk it and slipped it into my wallet. I carry it with me, a mini-manifesto to approaching life and work.
“The difference between winning and losing is often not quitting.” - Walt Disney
“If you work for the awards, you don’t do good work. But if you do good work the awards will come.” - Richard Betts
“What you seek is seeking you.” - Rumi
“This too shall pass.” - ancient Persian saying
“Seek out mentors constantly and without shame/and mentor others.” - Peter Altica
“Whomever you’re attracted to today possesses whatever qualities in yourself you’re ready to nurture”. - Kristen Ulmer
Real work and real satisfaction come from the opposite of what the web provides. They come from going deep into something. The book you’re writing, the album your making, the movie your producing, and staying there for a long, long time.” - Steven Pressfield
“If you’re looking for work- life balance in your 20s or 30s you’re likely in the wrong career. If you’re doing something you love you don’t want work - life balance.” - Debbie Millman
“Follow your intellectual curiosity over whoever is ‘hot’ right now. If your curiosity ever leads you to a place where society eventually wants to go, you’ll get paid extremely well.” - Naval Ravikant
“Don’t do things that you know are morally wrong. Not because someone is watching, but because you are.”
“Avoid people who are powerful but not honest or good.” - Mike Maples Jr.
“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” - Jesse Williams quoting Adepero
“We are in an arms race against distractions. We’ve come to develop technology to protect us against our devices. We to have to protect our time.” - Neil Strauss (paraphrased)
“Life shirks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” - Anais Nin
To do original work: “It’s not necessary to know something nobody else knows. It is necessary to believe something few others people believe.”
“Most people have internalized that we’re reliant on external conditions to be perfect in order to be able to go out and have a good time. So my son and I never missed a single storm, rain or snow, to go outside and romp in it . I want him to have an internal focus of control, not to be reliant on external conditions to be just so.” – paraphrase, from Josh Waitzkin
“If you generate enough bad ideas a few good ones tend to show up.” - Seth Godin
“If you can’t come up with 5 good ideas try writing down 10 bad ideas instead. Your brain is trying to protect you from harm - this method can circumvent that mechanism.” - paraphrased - James Altucher
On Newspapers: “They find the things that scares people the most and write about it.” - James Altucher
“Put the big rocks in the jar first, then the medium sized pebble, then the grains of sand - in that order. The minutiae fit around the big things, but the big things won’t fit around the minutiae.” - paraphrased, from Tim Ferris
“Every time I left the house my dad would say ‘Remember who you are,’ at the time I was like, ‘You’re so weird,’ now I see that this is so profound – Kaskade
Image: A Buck photo session in “non-ideal” conditions.