Timothy Ferriss Quotes

What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.

People will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.

A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.

But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn't making you stronger, they're making you weaker.

If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.

The question you should be asking isn't, "What do I want?" or "What are my goals?" but "What would excite me?

For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn't conspire against you, but it doesn't go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. "Someday" is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it's important to you and you want to do it "eventually," just do it and correct course along the way.

The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom.

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.

Being able to quit things that don't work is integral to being a winner

The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.

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

Learn to be difficult when it counts. In school as in life, having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time.

Poisonous people do not deserve your time. To think otherwise is masochistic.

Many a false step was made by standing still.

Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.

Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.

Life is too short to be small.

Remember—boredom is the enemy, not some abstract "failure.

Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.

The bottom line is that you only have the rights you fight for.

Productivity is for robots. What humans are going to be really good at is asking questions, being creative, and experiences.”   Kevin Kelly

$1,000,000 in the bank isn't the fantasy. The fantasy is the lifestyle of complete freedom it supposedly allows.

I'll repeat something you might consider tattooing on your forehead: What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.

It's lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for 'realistic' goals, paradoxically making them the most time and energy-consuming.

By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It's the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.

The fishing is best where the fewest go and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone is aiming for base hits.

Losers have goals. Winners have systems.

WHEN 99% OF PEOPLE DOUBT YOU, YOU’RE EITHER GRAVELY WRONG OR ABOUT TO MAKE HISTORY.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” —Pierre-Marc-Gaston

Never let a good crisis go to waste. It’s the universe challenging you to learn something new and rise to the next level of your potential.

If you ran into an asshole in the morning you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.

The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It’s just like building muscles.

The goal is not to simply eliminate the bad, which does nothing more than leave you with a vacuum, but to pursue and experience the best in the world.

Creativity is an infinite resource. The more you spend,the more you have.

Role models who push us to exceed our limits, physical training that removes our spare tires, and risks that expand our sphere of comfortable action are all examples of eustress—stress that is healthful and the stimulus for growth.

Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive, let alone thrive. Capacity, interest, and mental endurance all wax and wane. Plan accordingly.

Different is better when it is more effective or more fun.

If you let your learning lead to knowledge, you become a fool. If you let your learning lead to action, you become wealthy.

If you spend your time, worth $20-25 per hour, doing something that someone else will do for $10 per hour, it's simply a poor use of resources.

Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.

It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice.

Pareto's Law can be summarized as follows: 80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs.

Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.

Happiness is wanting what you have.

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?

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

Learn to be difficult when it counts

The superheroes you have in your mind (idols, icons, titans, billionaires, etc.) are nearly all walking flaws who’ve maximized 1 or 2 strengths.

Pacifists become militants. Freedom fighters become tyrants. Blessings become curses. Help becomes hindrance. More becomes less.

It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them.

When You Complain, Nobody Wants to Help You

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Maxims for Revolutionists

Simon received the Nobel Prize in 1978 for his contribution to organizational decision making: It is impossible to have perfect and complete information at any given time to make a decision.

I will take as a given that, for most people, somewhere between six and seven billion of them, the perfect job is the one that takes the least time.

Slow Dance: Have you ever watched kids, On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain, Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You better slow down. Don't dance too fast. Time is short. The music won't last. Do you run through each day, On the fly? When you ask: How are you? Do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed, With the next hundred chores, Running through your head? You'd better slow down, Don't dance too fast. Time is short, The music won't last. Ever told your child we'll do it tomorrow? And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die, Cause you never had time, To call and say Hi? You'd better slow down. Don't dance so fast. Time is short. The music won't last. When you run so fast to get somewhere, You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music, Before the song is over.

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

For all their bitching about what’s holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they’re being held from.

Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask.

I always advise young people to become good public speakers (top 25%). Anyone can do it with practice. If you add that talent to any other, suddenly you’re the boss of the people who have only one skill.

People are fond of using the its not what you know, its who you know adage as an excuse for inaction, as if all successful people are born with powerful friends. Nonsense.

The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That's a bittersweet ending.

If you let pride stop you, you will hate life

Give vulnerability a shot. Give discomfort its due. Because I think he or she who is willing to be the most uncomfortable is not only the bravest, but rises the fastest.

Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask. After all, conscious thinking is largely asking and answering questions in your own head. If you want confusion and heartache, ask vague questions. If you want uncommon clarity and results, ask uncommonly clear questions.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.

We do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training.” —Archilochus

To “fix” someone’s problem, you very often just need to empathically listen to them. Even

Investing in yourself is the most important investment you’ll ever make in your life. . . . There’s no financial investment that’ll ever match it, because if you develop more skill, more ability, more insight, more capacity, that’s what’s going to really provide economic freedom. . . . It’s those skill sets that really make that happen.” This

Adversity doesn’t build character; it reveals it.

When you try to do something big its hard to fail completely.

If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?

You’re not responsible for the hand of cards you were dealt. You’re responsible for maxing out what you were given.

Make your peace with the fact that saying ‘no’ often requires trading popularity for respect.” —Greg McKeown, Essentialism

Ours is a culture where we wear our ability to get by on very little sleep as a kind of badge of honor that symbolizes work ethic, or toughness, or some other virtue—but really, it’s a total profound failure of priorities and of self-respect.

People don’t want to be millionaires — they want to experience what they believe only millions can buy.

Using people to leverage a refined process multiplies production; using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems.

When I wake up in the morning, I’m thinking to myself: What can I do to be ready for that moment, which is coming? That propels me out of bed.

The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus.

It is possible to become world-class, enter the top 5% of performers in the world, in almost any subject within 6-12 months, or even 6-12 weeks.

The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.

My goal is to learn things once and use them forever.

Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. The heroes in this book are no different. Everyone struggles. Take solace in that.

In the end, winning is sleeping better.” —Jodie Foster

every day, it’s something to reflect on and think about ‘How do I become less competitive in order that I can become more successful?

Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.” —W.H. Auden

Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective - doing less - is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.

Don’t do things that you know are morally wrong. Not because someone is watching, but because you are. Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself. You’ll always know.

Age doesn't matter: an open mind does.

Age doesn’t matter; an open mind does.

It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor.

Money doesn't change you; it reveals who you are when you no longer have to be nice

What problem do you face every day that nobody has solved yet?” or “What is a great company no one has started?” I will

One of my favorite quotes is by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children . . . to leave the world a bit better . . . to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; this is to have succeeded.

If you want an average, successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths: 1) Become the best at one specific thing. 2) Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. The

It’s a short reminder that success can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations we are willing to have, and by the number of uncomfortable actions we are willing to take. The most fulfilled and effective people I know—world-famous creatives, billionaires, thought leaders, and more—look at their life’s journey as perhaps 25 percent finding themselves and 75 percent creating themselves.

What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore? I’m probably hopelessly out of date but my advice is get real-world experience: Be a cowboy. Drive a truck. Join the Marine Corps. Get out of the hypercompetitive “life hack” frame of mind. I’m 74. Believe me, you’ve got all the time in the world. You’ve got ten lifetimes ahead of you. Don’t worry about your friends “beating” you or “getting somewhere” ahead of you. Get out into the real dirt world and start failing. Why do I say that? Because the goal is to connect with your own self, your own soul. Adversity. Everybody spends their life trying to avoid it. Me too. But the best things that ever happened to me came during the times when the shit hit the fan and I had nothing and nobody to help me. Who are you really? What do you really want? Get out there and fail and find out.

If you are nervous about making the jump or simply putting it off out of fear of the unknown, here is your antidote. Write down your answers to these questions, and keep in mind that thinking a lot will not prove as fruitful or as prolific as simply brain vomiting on the page. Write and do not edit - aim for volume. Spend a few minutes on each answer. 1. Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering. 2. What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily? 3. What are the outcomes or benefits, both temporary and permanent, of more probably scenarios? 4. If you were fired from your job today, what would you do to get things under financial control? 5. What are you putting off out of fear? 6. What is it costing you - financially, emotionally, and physically - to postpone action? 7. What are you waiting for?

By using money as the scapegoat and work as our all-consuming routine, we are able to conveniently disallow ourselves to do otherwise: 'John, I'd love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I've got at least three hours of unimportant email to reply to before calling prospects who said 'no' yesterday. Gotta run!

here’s my 8-step process for maximizing efficacy (doing the right things): Wake up at least 1 hour before you have to be at a computer screen. Email is the mind-killer. Make a cup of tea (I like pu-erh) and sit down with a pen/pencil and paper. Write down the 3 to 5 things—and no more—that are making you the most anxious or uncomfortable. They’re often things that have been punted from one day’s to-do list to the next, to the next, to the next, and so on. Most important usually equals most uncomfortable, with some chance of rejection or conflict. For each item, ask yourself: “If this were the only thing I accomplished today, would I be satisfied with my day?” “Will moving this forward make all the other to-dos unimportant or easier to knock off later?” Put another way: “What, if done, will make all of the rest easier or irrelevant?” Look only at the items you’ve answered “yes” to for at least one of these questions. Block out at 2 to 3 hours to focus on ONE of them for today. Let the rest of the urgent but less important stuff slide. It will still be there tomorrow. TO BE CLEAR: Block out at 2 to 3 HOURS to focus on ONE of them for today. This is ONE BLOCK OF TIME. Cobbling together 10 minutes here and there to add up to 120 minutes does not work. No phone calls or social media allowed. If you get distracted or start procrastinating, don’t freak out and downward-spiral; just gently come back to your ONE to-do.