Tim Ferriss Quotes

To have an uncommon lifestyle, you need to develop the uncommon habit of making decisions, both for yourself and for others.

Converting your own passions into a job is the fastest method for eliminating any passion you once had.

People feel personally slighted if you don't respond to them in 30 seconds and treat email as instant messenger.

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.

I have plenty of money to do what I want to do, and I have the relationships.

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

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.

Most people can do absolutely awe-inspiring things. Sometimes they just need a little nudge.

The manifesto of the dealmaker is simple: Reality is negotiable.

Compile your to-do list for tomorrow no later than this evening.

The downstream effects are unknown. Do your best and hope for the best. If you're improving the world-however you define that-consider your job well done.

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.

Fear is your friend. It is an indicator. Sometimes it shows you what you shouldn't do, more often than not it shows you what you should do.

Language learning deserves special mention. It is, bar none, the best thing you can do to hone clear thinking.

Rather than spend my life on data entry and typing, I also take photos on my iPhone of business cards, wine labels, menus, or anything I want to have searchable on-the-run.

Don’t follow a model that doesn't work. If the recipe sucks, it doesn't matter how good a cook you are.

The commonsense rules of the "real world" are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions.

I'm not a fan of idleness, except in small doses.

I open each class with an explanation of the singular importance of being a "dealmaker." The manifesto of the dealmaker is simple: Reality is negotiable.

Doing less is not being lazy. Don't give in to a culture that values personal sacrifice over personal productivity.

Be bold and don't worry about what people think. They don't do it that often anyway.

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

Unbeknownst to most fun-loving bipeds, not all stress is bad. Indeed, the New Rich don't aim to eliminate all stress. Not in the least.

For most people, life would be boring without meaningful work.

I didn't even like white wine. Then I tasted it and bought a case. It was the first case of any wine I'd ever bought.

Happiness can be bought with a bottle of wine and has become ambiguous through overuse.

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.

Companies that start by redesigning the economics of an industry often finish by redesigning the whole industry-and owning it.

Seemingly unrelated [things] that are in fact really related, that's the stuff I like to talk about. Like dancing, language learning, swimming, three-pointers.

Perfection is an impossible destination

Just because something has been a lot of work or consumed a lot of time doesn't make it productive or worthwhile.

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

After decades of hauling telescopes around in the back of vans and going up to high altitude locations and so forth, I did finally build an observatory, here on Sonoma mountain.

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

What I don't like is snark for snark's sake. If you are going to make fun of me, at least be witty while doing it.

Writing is thought crystalized on a piece of paper, which can then be reviewed.

The book is first and foremost something I made for myself.

The brain is where most people really screw up.