Take a photo of a barcode or cover
What a journey!
I read a chapter of this each day after my yoga practice. Each chapter taught me something, some of them profoundly, and were a great way to start my day. I folded over the corners of many pages to follow up the book recommendations or videos later.
There is so much wisdom and learning here.
I’m going to do a second go round in the Spring to go deeper on the references.
I might start giving this book to everyone I know!
I read a chapter of this each day after my yoga practice. Each chapter taught me something, some of them profoundly, and were a great way to start my day. I folded over the corners of many pages to follow up the book recommendations or videos later.
There is so much wisdom and learning here.
I’m going to do a second go round in the Spring to go deeper on the references.
I might start giving this book to everyone I know!
First and foremost, shoutout Catherine for gifting me this book on my bday <3
Like the lifestyle guru he is, Tim Ferris takes on the challenge to change your life(style), by interviewing 114 experts in their respective fields. I always wondered what makes the rich, rich and the successful, successful. Through this book, we get the insider’s scoop on how these humans became supers.
I found common themes among all of these supers. First, they all journal. All of them! Doesn’t matter if it’s in the morning or at night, for five minutes or five hours, but they all take the time to reflect. They journal not to “find themselves,” but spill their anxieties and worries out onto a page to declutter their brains.
I can’t find which chapter this annotation is from (mind you, I read this in August and I’m writing a review in December) but I loved this part about morning journaling: the real value is that “I’m just kidding my monkey mind on paper so I can get on with my fucking day.” Morning pages don’t need to solve your problems. They simply need to get them out of your head, where they otherwise bounce around all day, like a bullet ricocheting and saw your school. Could bitching and moaning on paper for five minutes each morning change your life? As crazy as it seems, I believe the answer is yes.
Here are my favorite interviewees:
Matt Mullenweg
Matt is the original lead developer of WordPress, a website I personally use and love when working for a professor at the Columbia Business School. Matt wrote the majority of the code for WordPress over a year of polyphasic sleep: roughly 4 hours of waking, followed by 20 to 30 minutes of sleep, repeated indefinitely. This is nicknamed the Uberman protocol. How cool is that?!
He does just one push-up before bed. Yes, just one push-up. When you have a goal so embarrassingly small as a goal, there’s no excuse to not do it, and then that can become a habit.
It’s a great tip to get over that initial hump with something.
I love Matt’s advice here.
Peter Thiel
Billionaire, entrepreneur, and former CEO of Paypal. I resonated with how open and honest he was when it comes to failure, something that society has glamorized much too far. I read this book after a fatal failure on my own part, and I actually appreciated his takes – not all failures have to be a LIFE CHANGING LIFE LESSON:
“I think failure is massively overrated. Most businesses fail for more than one reason. I think people actually do not learn very much from failure. I think it ends up being damage and demoralizing to people in the long run, and… a death of every business is a tragedy. It’s not some sort of beautiful aesthetic where there’s a lot of carnage, and it’s not some sort of education imperative. So I think failures, neither Darwinian, nor an educational imperative. Failure is always simply a tragedy.
Also, I’ve gotten a hell of a lot of book recommendations from all these rich and famous people.
1) Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
2) Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
3) The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy—What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny by William Strasse
4) Mindset by Carol Dweck
5) As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
6) Autobiography of Malcolm X
7) The Second World War by John Keegan
8) The recommender said all you need to know is from World War II
9) On War by Carl von Clausewitz (Recommended by Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn)
10) Art of War by Sun Tzu (Also recommended by Reid Hoffman)
11) The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
Don’t let the 826-page count scare you. Each interview lasts only one to three pages – longest one at ten – so it really reads like back-to-back articles instead of a cohesive book.
Like the lifestyle guru he is, Tim Ferris takes on the challenge to change your life(style), by interviewing 114 experts in their respective fields. I always wondered what makes the rich, rich and the successful, successful. Through this book, we get the insider’s scoop on how these humans became supers.
I found common themes among all of these supers. First, they all journal. All of them! Doesn’t matter if it’s in the morning or at night, for five minutes or five hours, but they all take the time to reflect. They journal not to “find themselves,” but spill their anxieties and worries out onto a page to declutter their brains.
I can’t find which chapter this annotation is from (mind you, I read this in August and I’m writing a review in December) but I loved this part about morning journaling: the real value is that “I’m just kidding my monkey mind on paper so I can get on with my fucking day.” Morning pages don’t need to solve your problems. They simply need to get them out of your head, where they otherwise bounce around all day, like a bullet ricocheting and saw your school. Could bitching and moaning on paper for five minutes each morning change your life? As crazy as it seems, I believe the answer is yes.
Here are my favorite interviewees:
Matt Mullenweg
Matt is the original lead developer of WordPress, a website I personally use and love when working for a professor at the Columbia Business School. Matt wrote the majority of the code for WordPress over a year of polyphasic sleep: roughly 4 hours of waking, followed by 20 to 30 minutes of sleep, repeated indefinitely. This is nicknamed the Uberman protocol. How cool is that?!
He does just one push-up before bed. Yes, just one push-up. When you have a goal so embarrassingly small as a goal, there’s no excuse to not do it, and then that can become a habit.
It’s a great tip to get over that initial hump with something.
I love Matt’s advice here.
Peter Thiel
Billionaire, entrepreneur, and former CEO of Paypal. I resonated with how open and honest he was when it comes to failure, something that society has glamorized much too far. I read this book after a fatal failure on my own part, and I actually appreciated his takes – not all failures have to be a LIFE CHANGING LIFE LESSON:
“I think failure is massively overrated. Most businesses fail for more than one reason. I think people actually do not learn very much from failure. I think it ends up being damage and demoralizing to people in the long run, and… a death of every business is a tragedy. It’s not some sort of beautiful aesthetic where there’s a lot of carnage, and it’s not some sort of education imperative. So I think failures, neither Darwinian, nor an educational imperative. Failure is always simply a tragedy.
Also, I’ve gotten a hell of a lot of book recommendations from all these rich and famous people.
1) Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
2) Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
3) The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy—What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny by William Strasse
4) Mindset by Carol Dweck
5) As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
6) Autobiography of Malcolm X
7) The Second World War by John Keegan
8) The recommender said all you need to know is from World War II
9) On War by Carl von Clausewitz (Recommended by Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn)
10) Art of War by Sun Tzu (Also recommended by Reid Hoffman)
11) The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
Don’t let the 826-page count scare you. Each interview lasts only one to three pages – longest one at ten – so it really reads like back-to-back articles instead of a cohesive book.
Half-way through the book I questioned if this is meant to be taken seriously or if this is actually satire of some sort. The further the book went, it just felt like rich people being disconnected from the reality. There were small bits that were interesting, but not enough for me to finish this.
It was not easy to get familiar with this book. At the end, as the author says, is not even a book. Is more like a recollection of thoughts, phrases, ideas and most , rituals that successful people do every single day.
Yet, once I started to advance, the book caught me. Tools of titans has this tiny sparks that can turn into wildfires. To me, a few music recommendations, a few book, and a few ideas open so many doors. I´m sure I'll come back to this book to have some inspiration
Yet, once I started to advance, the book caught me. Tools of titans has this tiny sparks that can turn into wildfires. To me, a few music recommendations, a few book, and a few ideas open so many doors. I´m sure I'll come back to this book to have some inspiration
View my best reviews and a collection of mental models at jasperburns.blog.
informative
inspiring
informative
fast-paced
A book I'll always come back to each year. Little nuggets of info that I can apply to my life.
This was slightly overwhelming in the sense that there is SO MUCH good advice and interesting ideas in here. Next time I'm feeling stagnant I know I'll skim through this book again and leave with new ideas and goals
informative
inspiring