16 Quotes by Tim Ferriss That Will Let You Play the Game of Life in God Mode

"Someday' is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you."

Image Credit: tim.blog

Tim Ferriss is an easy character to throw stones at.

Many have tried. Idiots. The challenge with Tim Ferriss is he wrote a clickbait book years ago called “The 4-Hour Workweek.”

Naturally the title suggests you can be a lazy mofo and do no work.

Now, if society is made up of lots of these lazy mofos who only work 4 hours a week, well, you could say, humanity is screwed. But that’s now what he meant.

In recent times Tim Ferriss is the first to admit that he doesn’t believe anymore in a lot of what he wrote initially in the 4-hour Workweek, and that it’s cringe AF.

Makes sense.

That’s because what we say, do, and write when we’re younger becomes embarrassing as we grow in life. I know I wrote a bunch of bullsh*t about waking up at 4 am back in the day. But we learn and grow.

In recent years Tim has become a badass.

His podcast has created some of the best conversations you’ll find anywhere online – it’s less about opinions, and more about ideas (which I love).

Here are the best quotes I got from Tim Ferriss.

"To do the impossible, you need to ignore the popular."

Social media warps our reality.

It’s easy to believe an idea is important or remarkable based on its social media engagement. Having been in the game for 8 years, I can tell you a lot of what looks popular is manipulated.

Platforms boost content that suits their agenda. And individuals pay money for engagement or to get on podcasts where there’s loads of attention.

Don’t be fooled.

Most of the best ideas, and a lot of the most helpful advice, isn’t popular.

“It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.”

Execution is the skill that creates success.

So few do it. They get their head stuck in a book or get another useless qualification, rather than take action. Why?

Action is scary. Stuff can go wrong. Your reputation is at risk. Thinking and planning are comfortable whereas doing is uncomfortable.

Our lizard brain loves comfort so we avoid execution as if it’s corni-rona.

“The first book was turned down by 26 publishers.”

People think Timmy boy wrote the 4-Hour Workweek and became a superstar.

Not quite amigo.

Tim faced brutal rejection from loads of book publishers. People thought his idea was stupid. The original title mentioned something about being a drug lord.

What Tim learned accidentally was to title a book with an uncommon idea to create a new category. Because a lot of success in content creation is the title, not what comes later. Few understand.

Tim shows us his success is hard. Everything worth doing in life is hard. “Choose your hard” as they say.

There’s no success story without massive rejection. Read that again.

Gif Credit: Giphy

“Age doesn’t matter: an open mind does.”

In the job world the word “experience” gets thrown around like a rag doll.

Experience is stupid. Most of these experienced folks learned how to do three dumb things in their first year. Then they just repeated those dumb things year after year and called it a career.

Experience doesn’t fool pros like Tim Ferriss. Nope.

He’s looking for an open mind because it determines the results more than how many times you warmed an office chair. Showing up is just glorified laziness.

How you think is the difference that creates success.

A closed mind will never be successful.

“Get good at being a troublemaker and saying sorry when you really screw up.”

Troublemakers create change.

Those who follow the rules get held back by the rules. Troublemakers reinterpret, bend, and even break the rules. Sometimes they go too far and apologize. Most of the time they go just far enough and create change aka innovation.

Dare to be a troublemaker.

“Fear is your friend. Fear is an indicator. Sometimes it shows you what you shouldn’t do, but more often than not it shows you exactly what you should do.”

Fear is a compass.

Rather than hire a life coach to transform your life, do it yourself. DIY the f*ck out of the issue and save $20k.

Whatever you want in life, fear holds the key to your future.

For me, it was quitting my dumb office job where I reported to a bunch of job title worshippers who did two-tenths of bugger all each day. I was full of fear when I went to quit, yet I leaned into it. Best decision I’ve ever made.

In fact everything I’m proud of started with a huge fear. There’s a lesson in that.

"Never let a good crisis go to waste. It's the universe challenging you to learn something new and rise to the next level of your potential."

A crisis will arrive when you least expect it.

Most people panic. They take time off work. They break down. They feel unlucky and as if life isn’t fair. Wrong.

A crisis is a hidden opportunity.

A singer I love, Nightbirde, got told she would probably die from cancer. It had spread all over her body. With nothing to lose she attended America's Got Talent tv show. She crushed it and became a singing sensation.

She got to live this dream life for a year.

Recently she lost her battle with cancer. But geez, how cool that the last year of her life was easily the best year of her life.

What if the cancer crisis never entered happened? We’d probably not know her name and she would have never inspired millions of people.

Take a good crisis and turn it into a beautiful miracle.

"Often, all that stands between you and what you want is a better set of questions."

I meet so many people who ask the wrong questions.

They focus on why their goals are impossible instead of asking questions to learn how to make them possible.

When I get a “no” I always question it.

I assume I asked the wrong questions and start again. “How would I do X” is one of my favorites. Or “what would it take for that to change?”

Don’t accept a no. Ask a better question instead.

If that doesn’t work then ask a different person. It’s amazing how ten people with the same job title from the same company can all come up with different answers to the same questions.

It’s because life is complicated AF. We’re just winging it.

We have no clue what we’re doing. Make sure the questions you ask and the rejections you cop reflect this reality, or you’re leaving a lot of opportunities on the table for someone else to snatch.

“Give vulnerability a shot. Give discomfort its due. Because I think he or she who is willing to be the most uncomfortable is not only the bravest, but rises the fastest.”

There’s a comfort crisis. It’s why so many adults have canceled Netflix and got a TikTok addiction instead.

TikTok equals mindless comfort.

You don’t need to think about hard problems because TikTok will paper over them with useless dance videos for you.

Those who have what you want are no smarter. They simply spend more time in discomfort than comfort.

Right now I’m trying to achieve a big goal. The smile on my face is massive. Although yesterday I worked from 6 am until 10 pm with no breaks. I know it’s not the best way to work. I know it’s over-hustling.

But I don’t give a fudge.

What I want isn’t going to happen unless I treat this goal like a marathon and go beyond my comfortable working hours (8 hours when things are normal).

Vulnerability is key too. It’s what has made my writing popular over the years. People are dying to hear real stories that don’t make the author look like a show pony on display at a Ferrari fashion show. Makes sense.

Practice discomfort and vulnerability to achieve your goals faster. Take zero increase in IQ to do.

"Creativity is an infinite resource. The more you spend, the more you have."

No wonder writing daily online is a superpower. Nuff said.

“I want to measure twice, and cut once; therefore, the vast majority of my important work is deciding what to work on.”

Spend way more time working out what is a genuine priority and what isn’t. Then ruthlessly say no to all the barriers in the way of productive, useful work.

“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”

Those who experience true success create change.

Getting people who don’t want to change to take action is hard. This will lead to uncomfortable conversations. You either have them or not. There’s only so far being nice will get you.

Sometimes you gotta get the lazy mofo standing in your way to move.

It’ll be uncomfortable, but when they do get out of the way, because there’s a tornado (you) heading towards them, you’ll feel amazing.

Say what is uncomfortable. Just adjust your tone to reflect a leader’s instead of a bully’s.

"'Someday' is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you."

Too many people ‘someday’ all over themselves.

The only day is today. It’s the only guarantee. If you say you want something then take a tiny action today or stop complaining. Action carries resistance in the brain.

You beat the resistance by taking smaller actions towards a goal more frequently.

Now you can say today I did instead of someday I’ll take action on this huge lofty goal I’ve been crapping on about for years.

I get it with wannabe writers all the time. “I’ve always wanted to write for a job like you.” All I can think to myself is “so publish a one-sentence tweet today and get started.” Action makes any goal less complicated.

‘Someday’ leads to a grave full of regrets.

(Don’t piss off the funeral party.)

“Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.”

This advice is rarely given: do more of what excites you.

I get excited by writing and teaching online, so I do it every damn day. Perhaps life would make more sense if you spent more hours doing the stuff that excites you.

Pro tip: stuff that excites you makes for a great online business.

“In school as in life, having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time.”

Assertiveness is the one trait I recommend everyone develop.

Don’t let slimy people walk over you like you’re a dead body. Stand up. Be confident. Tell people what you will and won’t tolerate. Set up a list of standards and adhere to them. That’s how you get unfair advantages.

“To enjoy life, you don’t need fancy nonsense, but you do need to control your time and realize that most things just aren’t as serious as you make them out to be.”

Heck, it’s easy to overthink every conversation, every action, every decision.

Ultimately, most of what you stress about won’t matter in ten years. The people who you think will be angry will forget whatever you said or did in a few weeks. It’s easy to overanalyze each situation and think it’s going to shape the universe forever.

It won’t.

The universe will be around for billions of years, yet we’ll breathe for a tiny fraction of that time. Within a generation or two your death will be completely forgotten. Not because you’re not important, but because history gets rewritten faster than we realize.

None of this is sad though. This reality is your license to kill it at life. Now you’ve got your permission slip. Use it.

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