In 2011 I read the 4 Hour Work Week. Like many, I became uber motivated to ‘fire the boss’ and retreat to a beach in Thailand. Little did I know that this process would be 7 years in the making, more challenging than expected, and when I eventually got there…I was bored as heck.
Sorry, Tim.
In reality, Tim rarely works so little. The quote: “Mini-retirements are wonderful, but I’m not going to spend my entire life on the sidelines.” comes to mind.
His points were that the world is now flat and opportunities exist to kill the ‘work 40 hours until age 65’ pathway like never before, especially with remote working positions becoming almost a cultural norm due to the current global situation.
There is much that we can learn from Tim, especially his latest book ‘Tribe of Mentors’. If you’re ready to be reminded of some inspiration from someone who kicked off the ‘lifetyle entrepreneur’ movement 😅 (that name is so corny it makes me laugh), then read through this epic list.
Most Inspiring Quotes by Tim Ferriss
1. Stop wishing and start doing.
2. There is just less competition for bigger goals.
3. The idea is not to be idle. That’s not something that I advocate. It is to maximize your per hour output.
4. Focus on impact, not approval.
5. 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.
6. If you want to have more, do more, and be more, it all begins with the voice that no one else hears.
7. Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective – doing less – is the path of the productive.
8. Lack of time is lack of priorities
9. The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.
10. 10x results don’t always require 10x effort.
11. True freedom is much more than having enough income and time to do what you want.
12. It’s often what you do, not how you do it, that is the determining factor. This is the difference from being effective; doing the right things, and being efficient; doing things well whether they are important.
13. Think big and don’t listen to people who tell you it can’t be done. Life’s too short to think small.
14. If you believe you can change the world, do what you believe is right and expect resistance and expect attackers.
15. People, even good people, will unknowingly abuse your time to the extent that you let them. Set good rules for all involved to minimize back-and-forth and meaningless communication.
16. The objective is to control your time – a non-renewable resource – and apply it where you have the highest leverage or enjoyment.
17. To get rich beyond your wildest dreams in startup investing, it isn’t remotely necessary to bet on a Facebook or Airbnb every year.
18. Focus, get the critical few done, and get out.
19. It is imperative that you learn to ignore or redirect all information and interruptions that are irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable. Most are all three.
20. There is a direct correlation between an increased sphere of comfort and getting what you want.
21. Realistic goals, goals restricted to the average ambition level, are uninspiring and will only fuel you through the first or second problem, at which point you throw in the towel. If the potential payoff is mediocre or average, so is your effort.
22. The best results I have had in my life; the most enjoyable times, have all come from asking the simple question: What is the worst that could happen?
23. Create slack, as no one will give it to you. This is the only way to swim forward instead of treading water.
24. The gems I’ve found were forged in the struggle.
25. The more you schedule and practice discomfort deliberately, the less unplanned discomfort will throw off your life and control your life.
26. You are the author of your own life, and it’s never too late to replace the stories you tell yourself and the world.
27. 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.
28. Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now.
29. For a long time, I’ve known that the key to getting started down the path of being remarkable in anything is to simply act with the intention of being remarkable.
30. Just because they say it can’t be done doesn’t make it so.
31. The gems I’ve found were forged in the struggle. Never ever give up, as you are never ever alone.
32. In the beginning of your career, you spend time to earn money. Once you hit your stride in any capacity, you should spend money to earn time, as the latter is nonrenewable.
33. It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.
34. The best way to counter-attack a hater is to make it blatantly obvious that their attack has had no impact on you.
35. In a world where nobody really knows anything, you have the incredible freedom to continually reinvest yourself and forge new paths, no matter how strange. Embrace your weird self.
36. We all get frustrated. I am particularly prone to frustration when I see little or no progress after several weeks of practicing something new.
37. Most “superheroes” are nothing of the sort. They’re weird, neurotic creatures who do big things despite lots of self-defeating habits and self-talk.
38. I came to France to take a break from everything. No social media, no email, no social commitments, no set plans… except one project.
39. Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about.
40. To do anything remotely interesting you need to train yourself to be effective at dealing with, responding to, even enjoying criticism.
41. My parents didn’t have much money growing up, but they always had a budget for books.
42. Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of mental laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
43. Simply reading Stoic passages in preparation for the day helps me to ideally, ignore, and when I cannot ignore, not respond to, certainly not engage with critics who have unfounded attacks.
44. I believe that life exists to be enjoyed, and that the most important thing is to feel good about yourself.
45. Greatness is setting ambitious goals that your former self would have thought impossible, and trying to get a little better every day.
46. Time is wasted because there is so much time available.
47. You don’t need to go through life huffing and puffing, straining and red-faced. You can get 95% of the results you want by calmly putting one foot in front of the other.
48. The lessons have made me millions of dollars and saved me years of wasted effort and frustration.
49. To feel more at peace and more successful, you don’t need genius-level brain power, access to some secret society, or to his a moving target of “just” and additional X dollars. Those are all distractions.
50. 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.
51. 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.
52. When you’re writing and you start to feel really uncomfortable, that’s when you know you’re starting to get it right. I’d imagine that applies to photography. It applies to everything.
53. Does your life have a purpose? Are you contributing anything useful to this world, or just shuffling papers, banging on a keyboard, and coming home to a drunken existence on the weekends?
54. I have built my blog traffic and book buzz using mostly offline activities, and I recommend others do the same.
55. Service isn’t limited to saving lives or the environment. It can also improve life. If you are a musician and put a smile on the faces of thousands or millions, I view that as service. If you are a mentor and change the life of one child for the better, the world has been improved.
56. Sometimes it pays to model the outliers, not flatten them into averages. This isn’t limited to business.
57. Truth be told, I never thought I’d make it to 40. My first book was rejected 27 times by publishers. The things that worked out weren’t supposed to work, so I realized on my birthday: I had no plan for after 40.
58. For anything approaching happiness, you have to want what you already have.
59. Every time I find myself stressed out, it’s because I do things primarily driven by growth.
60. First get the crowd, then sell the product.
61. 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.
62. An entrepreneur isn’t someone who owns a business, it’s someone who makes things happen.
63. Bloggers are uniquely positioned to create bestsellers.
64. 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.
65. Much like you would train your body, you can train your mind.
66. The majority of my finances come from early-stage startup investing.
67. Measure the cost of inaction, realize the unlikelihood and repairability of most missteps, and develop the most important habit of those who excel and enjoy doing so: action.
68. I created Tools Of Titans because it’s the book that I’ve wanted my entire life.
69. 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.
70. Fear itself is quite fear-inducing. Most intelligent people in the world dress it up as something else: optimistic denial.
71. Ah, the 4-Hour blessing and curse! That title and accidental brand has been great to me (and caused a lot of headache), but I think it’s time to retire that jersey.
(As I mentioned in the intro….)
72. Being financially rich and having the ability to live like a millionaire are fundamentally two very different things.
73. If you sit down in a negative state, you will be thinking first and foremost of problems, and not solutions.
74. I leaned against the wall and slid down until I was sitting on the floor. I closed my eyes, smiled, and took a deep breath. Things were about to change. Everything was about to change.
75. I’ve seen the promised land, and there is good news. You can have it all.