Tim Ferriss
I tend to split my activities into fun, income and legacy. The number of things in that finance bucket is pretty few and far between and doesn't consume much time at all.Collection: Finance
Most of my readers think I'm obsessed with time management, but they haven't seen the other - much more legitimate, much more extreme - obsession. I've recorded almost every workout I've done since age 18. Since 2004, I've been tracking everything from complete lipid panels, insulin, and hemoglobin A1c, to IGF-1 and free testosterone.Collection: Age
I was an All-American in wrestling in high school, was National Champion in Chinese kickboxing in 1999 and have spent a lot of time around professional athletes, which includes my eight-plus years as CEO of a sports nutrition company.Collection: Sports
Everyone is going to binge on a diet, for instance, so plan for it, schedule it, and contain the damage.Collection: Diet
One of the bigger misconceptions of learning is that many skills take a lifetime to get world-class at, or 10,000 hours to become world-class at.Collection: Learning
I value self-discipline, but creating systems that make it next to impossible to misbehave is more reliable than self-control.
Online I see people committing 'social media suicide' all the time by one of two ways. Firstly by responding to all criticism, meaning you're never going to find time to complete important milestones of your own, and by responding to things that don't warrant a response. This lends more credibility by driving traffic.
I like work/life separation, not work/life balance. What I mean by that is, if I'm on, I want to be on and maximally productive. If I'm off, I don't want to think about work. When people strive for work/life balance, they end up blending them. That's how you end up checking email all day Saturday.
You don't have to travel, but I find extended travel to be a helpful tool for reexamining yourself and the constraints you've artificially placed on your life. It's easy to believe everything has to be done one way if you're always in one place around the same people.
Resveratrol is fascinating stuff. One of the best sources of information about it is the Immortality Institute. They have a forum where some people are in the 500 Club, as they call it. They've been taking 500 milligrams for years. It's a really great source of data.
I used Evernote almost exclusively for researching 'The 4-Hour Body.' I was able to eliminate all of the perpetually open tabs and multiple bookmarking services. It's also all automatically backed up to Evernote, which gives me peace of mind.
World barista champions use the AeroPress to make coffee on the folding tray tables of airplanes.
Converting your own passions into a job is the fastest method for eliminating any passion you once had.
I have plenty of money to do what I want to do, and I have the relationships.
I think that whenever you feel reactive or are being reactive as opposed to proactive, that inherently - consciously or subconsciously - creates a lot of stress.
To be functionally fluent in a language, for instance, in most cases you need about 1,200 words. To acquire a total of vocabulary words, if you really train someone well they can acquire 200 to 300 words a day, which means that in a week they can acquire the vocabulary necessary to speak a language.
One of the great things about stargazing is that it's immediately at hand for so many people. You know, you could get into scuba diving or bird watching, but the stars are always up there.
I encourage active skepticism - when people are being skeptical because they're trying to identify the best course of action. They're trying to identify the next step for themselves or other people.
I definitely grew up with a lot of venom and distaste for city people.
I don't journal to 'be productive.' I don't do it to find great ideas or to put down prose I can later publish. The pages aren't intended for anyone but me. It's the most cost-effective therapy I've ever found.
Learn the art of the pitch and of messaging.
I've found cinnamon to be very effective for lowering the glycemic response to meals. People have heard that before, but I didn't realize how profound it could be until I did the actual testing with continuous glucose monitors. And I tested all different varieties and species of cinnamon from Ceylon to Saigon.
I started using Twitter about year after its very early adoption and ended up investing in it around that same time. I'm involved with the Tech scene and companies ranging from Facebook, Stumbleupon and Twitter.
I work hard, but in spurts.
The best way to counter-attack a hater is to make it blatantly obvious that their attack has had no impact on you.
A recession is very bad for publicly traded companies, but it's the best time for startups. When you have massive layoffs, there's more competition for available jobs, which means that an entrepreneur can hire freelancers at a lower cost.
Writing is thought crystalized on a piece of paper, which can then be reviewed.
I view myself as an experimentalist. I've tried everything in the book, and I have replicated results to one extent or another.
I still feel there are much smarter self-promoters out there than me. I am very methodical about my messaging, and I know how to gain attention very quickly.
I am a human guinea pig and a professional dilettante.
There are certain things I will automate, but when it comes to quality control, I want to keep a very close eye.
I think that survivorship bias, the survivorship bias is something I'm very acutely familiar with because of investing.
Food became for me a way of becoming self-sufficient with my hands, to regain manual literacy, which I think has been lost on our generation and certainly younger generations. Very few people can actually make things with their hands and do things with their hands.
I gauge success in years, not weeks. The weekend box-office approach to book launches is short sighted and encourages crappy books.
My parents did a great job of raising me and my brother. Very supportive parents.
My parents didn't have much money growing up, but they always had a budget for books.
Being called a huckster and a charlatan started several years ago, so that's something I'm accustomed to. In most cases, it doesn't bother me.
If you take a strong stance and have a clear opinion or statement on any subject online, you're going to polarize people. And without that polarity, there's no discussion. Discussion is what I want, which means that I'm fine with the consequences.
I discourage passive skepticism, which is the armchair variety where people sit back and criticize without ever subjecting their theories or themselves to real field testing.
If someone's criticism is completely unfounded on data, then I don't want to hear it. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
The first thing I would do for anyone who's trying to lose body fat, for instance, would be to remove foods from the house that he or she would consume during lapses of self-control.
If you look at the purported dangers of salt or fat, there is no consensus of support in scientific literature. So I would ask first: 'Is it possible to have an informed government that actually follows the science?' From what I've seen, it's not likely.
Exercise is overrated.
The problem with New Year's resolutions - and resolutions to 'get in better shape' in general, which are very amorphous - is that people try to adopt too many behavioral changes at once. It doesn't work. I don't care if you're a world-class CEO - you'll quit.
I think time management as a label encourages people to view each 24-hour period as a slot in which they should pack as much as possible.
I'm not averse to making a lot of money. But where does that end? I hang out with people with hundreds of millions of dollars. Is that the standard by which I should measure myself? Where does that take you if you're in my business? I think it takes you to pretty dark, corrupt places.
Every time I find myself stressed out, it's because I do things primarily driven by growth.
I have scary eyes. I look like the guy in 'American History X,' yes. I remember coming home from school and asking my mum if I could get an eye transplant, and of course she declined.
The best entrepreneurs I've ever met are all good communicators. It's perhaps one of the very few unifying factors.
Everything that works in sales has been done already. Just keep track of the crap that you buy, or the awesome stuff that you buy, and decide what was the trigger, and then just sell to people like you. It's really that easy - and that's what I do.