Tools of Titans is a compendium of advice on how to be healthy, wealthy and wise transcribed from the Tim Terris podcast series based on his many interviews with entrepreneurs, scientists, TED speakers and high performers.
Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris
Tools of Titans is basically a distilled notebook of life advice from Tim Ferris
Covering topics such as creativity, productivity, authorship, spirituality, psychedelics and even suicide, the book draws on the collective wisdom of some of the best known influencers in the genre including Malcolm Gladwell, Tony Robbins, Paulo Coelho, Peter Theil, Ed Catmull and various others.
Written as a series of questions and answers, the book also features detailed sections on morning rituals, lifestyle design, hacking tools, meditation and writing prompts honed by the author over the years since the publication of the Four Hour Work Week.
Below are some of the key insights I took from this book:
Key Insights
- The human body is capable of pretty much anything given the right motivation and a consistent commitment to practice.
- Ketogenic diets can have a demonstrable and immediate positive impact on your health, wellbeing and weight.
- The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life. [Tony Robbins]
- Noone deserves sugar water just because they do basic exercise.
- Psychedelic drugs should only ever be used with caution and appropriate respect for set, setting, sitters and motivation to learn.
- Flotation tanks can create a psychedelic experience without substances, as can meditation techniques.
- Playing Tetris can help you go to sleep by providing visual stimuli.
- Morning rituals such as exercise, meditation and making the bed can create positive momentum for the rest of the day.
- Meditation practices appear to be a consistent pattern for 80% of high performers featured in the book.
- Most people play defence in life due to our habitual nature when the rewards are greater when you play offence. [Chris Sacca]
- Are you there to compete or there to win? [Arnold Schwarzenegger]
- If more information was the answer we would all be billionaires with perfect abs [Derek Sivers]
- In life the act of making a decision stops us from being a donkey between water and hay and provides true freedom.
- All suffering comes from a focus on you. Instead it’s always better to stop complaining and take control of your life [Tony Robbins]
- The best investors always protect the downside and look for asymmetric risks and return ratios.
- Speed is an important principle of success even if you make foot faults along the way it’s important to learn to improvise rather than seek perfect.
- Noone should fetishize failure [Peter Theil]
- If you have a good idea, first tell ten people and aim to give it away [Seth Godin]
- To generate good ideas you need to generate 100s of bad ideas. You can do this using a daily ten principle [James Altucher]
- Instead of paying for education, consider creating a real world version of your degree with the proceeds saved from skipping class [Tim Ferris]
- Humour has six elements – naughty, clever, cute, bizarre, mean and recognisable – a good joke usually has at least two elements.
- The practice of affirmations can help prime your mind to notice important steps on your path to success [Scott Adams]
- The law of the category is that it is always better to create a new category then add a me-too product into the mix [22 Immutable Laws of Marketing]
- Creativity is an infinite resource as the more you spend the more you have.
- Give away most of your material for free and focus on the high value customers who are happy to pay for premium.
- Always use questions that elicit narrative responses from other people.
- When creating a masterpiece, the first step is always to create something that actually sucks.
- When you complain, nobody wants to help you.
- When hiring always focus on Who rather than What
- Every great idea is a crazy idea until the day it becomes accepted.
- You must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool
- Don’t believe everything you think
- Two is one and one is none – the importance of fixing single points of failure.
- Wireshark, Charles, Nighthawk are among the top hacking tools for ethical hacking and cybersecurity.
- It’s important to name and set fear in its place otherwise it will prevent you from acting towards your highest goals [I see you Mara]
- Don’t attribute malice when other people’s behaviour can be explained by different factors [Alain de Botton]
- When writing, it’s always better to keep it simple and trust the reader rather than attempting to explain everything in full.
- In many circumstances, the idea of a consensus should make you cautious and strive to seek a contrarian position.
- All the real benefits of life come from the magic of compound interest in some form.
- If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life don’t work with them for a day.
- If you want to be taken seriously, you have to take things seriously.
- Learn the macro from the micro and understand that the little things are often the big things.
- Choose courage over comfort and make this a daily practice [Brene Brown]
- Find creative ways to use restrictions to your advantage by leveraging what you have an constructing a powerful narrative pitch around it [Robert Rodiguez]
- When something has gone wrong just say “Good” and immediately start a movement towards lessons learnt and how to move on [Jocko Willink]