Tools of Titans is the ultimate book of life advice, tips, guides and recommendations. I cannot imagine another book that could change your everyday life more than Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss. Of course, I may like this book so much because I am exactly its target reader.
I am fairly young, a freelancer working online and eager for practical information and advice. I cannot stick with a novel; I want to take something away after 15 minutes of reading. I fully understand that for someone who works from 8 am to 4 pm in the civil service, this book may not be the right fit. Or, on the contrary, it may nudge them towards change. The book has that power. In my view, it has the power to change ingrained habits, motivate and inspire.
Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
Tools of Titans has almost 700 pages packed with the most interesting snippets from podcasts and interviews. Tim Ferriss intersperses all of this with longer, narrowly focused chapters and his own comments. In general, the book is closer to an encyclopaedia than a novel.
Personally, I recommend underlining interesting things as you read, or better still, writing them down in a notebook (or in a Google document, as I did). For me, the book is not about ploughing through it quickly, but about reading a paragraph, thinking about it and possibly applying it to my own life.
Some people recommend reading the book as if you were pulling slips of paper out of a hat. Have you got 15 minutes? Take the book, open it at random and read.
19 top tips for inspiration and motivation from this book
To begin with, I certainly would not claim that the following content is the absolute best of Tools of Titans, since the whole book is already a selection of the best. I would, however, say that these are the more interesting points that were worth thinking about and noting down. If the following content appeals to you, do not hesitate to get the book. If I had to recommend just one book from last year, it would be this one.
Reid Hoffman is one of the co-founders of LinkedIn and a successful businessman. Hoffman developed his strategic skills playing board games in his youth and studying the writings of Carl von Clausewitz. Hoffman offers one valuable piece of advice for all businesspeople: in any business relationship, always solve the simplest, easiest and most profitable problem.
Ramit Sethi writes a personal finance blog read by more than a million people a month. Ramit makes money online thanks to his blog and his emails, which are simple yet very effective. Instead of complex, graphically sophisticated templates, Ramit uses an ordinary writing style that resembles everyday conversation. It has brought him remarkable success. Ramit also takes an interesting approach to pricing. He gives away 98% of his content for free, but charges ten or even a hundred times more than his competitors for the remaining two super-premium percent.
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Peter Thiel is the founder of PayPal, a billionaire and the first outside investor in Facebook. When asked about future technology trends, Peter makes a very interesting point. He says: “When something is a trend, lots of people are working on it. Once lots of people are working on something, there is huge competition with very small differences. People should not focus on being part of a trend. In my view, a sense of mission is more important. Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg came up with something new, they created a new field, and that is why they are so successful. They were the ones who set what would become a trend in the future.”
Ed Catmull co-founded Pixar with Steve Jobs and wrote the highly acclaimed book Creativity, Inc. Ed describes how incredibly skilled Jobs was in building Pixar, how he managed to take the company public and, in a way, make use of Disney. Ed spends 30 to 60 minutes every day on meditation.
Seth Godin is the author of many bestsellers and an authority on marketing. Godin says that people are often too stuck in their own frame and play with predictable cards. When failure comes, it is time to get up and move to a different table with different cards. In short, do not keep to the well-trodden path when it is not working, but try new routes and frameworks.
Chase Jarvis is the CEO of CreativeLive and an extremely successful photographer. Chase talks about charging a premium price from day one. When you set a high price, people expect premium work from you. This can quickly push you upwards in a spiral and get you into the top league of your field. On the other hand, in the early days, focus only on yourself and your product. As a beginner, you have a weak negotiating position, and improving your skills and product is better than bad collaborations.
If someone ever says yes very quickly, you have asked too low a price.
The best SEO is good content.
Dan Carlin brings history to life through a successful podcast. Do what you enjoy, even if you are not qualified for it. If everyone only did what they were qualified for, nobody would move forward. Amateurs can do things well too. Professionals built the Titanic, amateurs built the Ark… Dan Carlin is an excellent storyteller and presents historical information in a way nobody from the field can manage. Another piece of advice is that people should turn their flaws into their trademarks and make use of them.
Phil Libin is the founder of Evernote, the successful note-taking platform. Phil describes how important it is to be agile as a company grows. Setting up processes, communication and building an internal structure are key ingredients of success. As a company grows, its principles break down every so often and some things stop working. He says this always happens at the numbers 3 and 10. Whenever a company becomes three times bigger and then ten times bigger, a “crisis” occurs.
Chris Young is an inventor, innovator and author of successful modern cookbooks. When Chris, as a young man, was wondering what he would like to do in life that he would enjoy, his father gave him some advice. Your ideal job does not exist yet. You have to create an interesting job tailored to yourself. Do things that interest you and turn them into a job. Chris did not worry about adding notches to his CV to land an ordinary, better-paid job. Chris Young really did create his own job, and he considers his father and Winston Churchill his greatest role models; he recommends Churchill’s biography as required reading.
Neil Strauss has written eight successful bestsellers, such as The Game and The Truth. When interviewing billionaires, Neil tried to find out what sets them apart from ordinary people. One interesting finding was that billionaires do not accept the norms of their time. When they do not accept norms, they can innovate and succeed more easily.
Daymond John, founder of FUBU and marketer of the year. Daymond says his parents always taught him that he would never get rich from what he did during the day, but he could get rich from what he did in the evenings. In his view, his best investment was working as a courier in secondary school and meeting all kinds of people. That way he got to know different types of people and learned to spot interesting opportunities.
Noah Kagan was Facebook’s thirtieth employee and is now the CEO of SumoMe. Noah advises everyone who works on a computer to invest in their equipment if it is holding them back. He himself recommends getting a very fast router. From time to time, plan some activities and switch off Wi-Fi and Facebook, which distract you. Noah recommends one more hack: a smoothie maker. He considers it his best small investment.
Luis von Ahn is a professor of computer science and the CEO of the successful language app Duolingo. Luis talks about how he learned to examine things more deeply. Do you have a problem or specialism where you think you are strong, but have you tried explaining it to a complete layperson? This confrontation can be useful, because you will see how your problem looks to someone with no background knowledge of the subject.
Scott Belsky, entrepreneur, investor and founder of the Behance website. Scott describes a mistake Behance made in its early days. Behance’s attention was split between many products and services, which eventually escalated to the point where Behance could not cope with developing its main service. Belsky describes how he shut down several promising projects and services that he was very fond of. All so that the whole team could focus on its main task. Belsky compares it to an author killing off favourite characters so that the novel’s plot can finally move forward.
It is not about ideas, it is about making ideas happen.
Scott Belsky
B. J. Novak – actor, writer and producer of The Office. “But I make so much money.” Novak warns against people comforting themselves with a pile of money. If they do a job that bores them, wears them down or takes them nowhere, they should not console themselves with the thought that they earn a lot of money there. Novak also points out that you need to get into a good mood for creative work. Simply waking up in the morning is not enough to put you in a good mood and make you want to write creative things. Try to find morning rituals that get you into a good mood. Novak considers his best time for creative work to be between 11 am and 2 pm.
BJ Miller – a successful palliative care doctor. BJ considers good-quality wine to be the best purchase under 100 dollars because he sees a certain symbolism in it. When drinking good wine, he sees how much work went into it and how long the whole winemaking process was. He then drinks the wine in a single evening. BJ says that wine makes him reflect, and he points to the transience of life, which is more than mirrored in the bottle of wine itself. Overall, BJ promotes enjoying the present moment. People should enjoy the present more and think less about the future. Some people are always rushing and cannot savour the here and now .
Maria Popova – author of a successful blog about life. How to say NO to the media. Maria describes how she would easily spend 20 hours preparing for an interview with CNN. After doing this several times, she realised it was taking away time she could have spent on writing, the very thing that got her invited on air in the first place. The lesson is that artists should not appear in the media if it takes up a lot of time that they would be better off investing in their work. Maria recommends reading the journals of David Thoreau, who wrote about definitions of success 150 years ago in a very timeless way. For example, he identifies the great danger of sitting for long periods, which is more than relevant today.
Jocko Willink – a combat veteran and martial arts specialist. Willink equates freedom with discipline. Without discipline and clear things that need to be done, a person faces an endless choice about what to do. This can be tiring and even stressful for some people. When you have a clear, fixed point in your schedule, you are then free to build the rest of your schedule around it. As someone who took part in several operations in Iraq, he says that without darkness, you cannot fully appreciate the light. This means that unless you go through difficult and unpleasant trials, you cannot fully enjoy the beauty of the world. Jocko is therefore grateful for every new sunrise, because many of his friends did not survive that dark part.
Ed Cooke – CEO of Memrise and an award winner in memory competitions. The feeling that I am useless. Ed had this feeling quite often in his youth and learned to fight it in an interesting way. Whenever the feeling came over him, he would look at the stars or think of them. He imagined what the world looks like from the stars’ point of view, then zoomed in on his own life and told himself: I am in this world for such a brief moment, and I am afraid of something.
If this book caught your interest, be sure to also read our article on the best books for motivation or take a look at our list of recommended quality books.
