You know that saying, “you’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with?” Why not ‘spend time’ in the headspace of the best of the best? If you’ve read my post about using habits to build the life of your dreams, you know that I’m a huge proponent of finding your expanders- those people that inspire you to grow and become the best version of yourself. Studying the habits of prosperous people and incorporating those same habits into your daily routine is a recipe for success.
Tim Ferriss serves all of this up on a silver platter with his book Tools of Titans– one of the top 3 books I’ve read so far in 2020, hands down. It’s basically a treasure trove of short and snappy interviews from all the top CEO’s, billionaires and entrepreneurs. I can honestly say that reading this book changed my life. It was a portal through which I began to perceive the world from a different perspective. Here’s a roundup of the 18 hottest tips from these transformative expanders. Let me know in the comments below which one was the most mind-blowing for you!
1. “What if you just can’t come up with 10 ideas? Here’s the magic trick: If you can’t come up with 10 ideas, come up with 20 ideas… You are putting too much pressure on yourself. Perfection is the enemy of the idea muscle.” -James Altucher
>Tim Ferris: James recommends the habit of writing down 10 ideas each morning in a writer’s pad or tiny notebook. This exercise is for developing your ‘idea muscle’ and confidence for creativity on demand, so regular practice is more important than the topics.
2. “Don’t be afraid to do something you’re not qualified to do.”- Dan Carlin
>Tim Ferris: If I had always done what I was ‘qualified’ to do, I’d be pushing a broom somewhere.
3. “It’s not what you know, it’s what you do consistently.” -Tony Robbins
4. “Invest that little bit of time to make [your business] a little bit more human- or depending on your brand- a little funnier, a little more different, or a little more whatever. It’ll be worth it.” -Alexis Ohanian
5. “The biggest mistake you can make is to accept the norms of your time. Not accepting norms is where you innovate, whether it’s with technology, with books, with anything. So, not accepting the norm is the secret to really big success and changing the world.” -Neil Strauss
6. “I usually know I’m onto something when I’m a little bit afraid of it. I go: ‘Wow, I could mess this up.’” -Shay Carl
7. “My trauma therapist said every time you meet someone, just in your head say, ‘I love you’ before you have a conversation with them, and that conversation is going to be a lot better. When I meet someone, whether it’s the lady at the DMV who’s making me wait 2 hours (or someone else) I just assume everybody is doing the best they can with what they have which is really hard for a lot of us to accept.” -Whitney Cummings
8. “Well, I meet a lot of 30-year-olds who are trying to pursue many different directions at once, but not making any progress in any, right? They get frustrated that the world wants them to pick one thing, because they want to do them all: ‘Why do I have to choose? I don’t know what to choose!’ But the problem is, if you’re thinking short-term then you act as though if you don’t do them all this week, they won’t happen. The solution is to think long-term. To realize that you can do one of these things for a few years, and then do another one for a few years, and then another.” -Derek Sivers
9. “Seth [Godin] has no comments on his blog, he doesn’t pay attention to analytics, and he doesn’t use Twitter or Facebook (except to rebroadcast his daily blog posts, which is automated). In a world of tool obsession and FOMO on the next social platform, Seth doesn’t appear to care. He simply focuses on putting out good and short daily posts, he ignores the rest and he continues to thrive. There are no real rules, so make the rules that work for you.” -Tim Ferris
10. “Which one of those challenges did you assign yourself and which of those are you doing to please someone else? Your inbox is a to-do list to which anyone in the world can add an action item.” -Chris Sacca
11. “‘Write to please just one person.’ What he was really saying was write for yourself. Don’t try to please anyone but yourself. The second you start doing it for an audience, you’ve lost the game because creating something that is rewarding and sustainable over the long run requires, most of all, keeping yourself excited about it.” -Maria Popova
12. “So much of the job is more emotion and ‘heart work’ than it is ‘head work.’ The head comes in after, to look at what the heart has presented and organize it.” -Rick Rubin
13. “You should have a running list of three people that you’re always watching: someone senior to you that you want to emulate, a peer who you think is better at the job than you are and who you respect, and someone subordinate who’s doing the job you did- one, two, or three years ago- better than you did it. If you have just those three individuals that you’re constantly measuring yourself off of, and you’re constantly learning from them, you’re going to be exponentially better than you are.” -General Stanley McChrystal
14. “The number one theme that companies have when they really struggle is that they are not charging enough for their product… They don’t charge enough for their product to be able to afford the sales and marketing required to actually get anyone to buy it. Is your product any good if people won’t pay more for it?” -Marc Andreesen
15. “You realize that you will never be the best-looking person in the room. You’ll never be the smartest person in the room. You’ll never be the most educated, the most well-versed. You can never compete on those levels. But what you can always compete on, the true egalitarian aspect to success, is hard work. You can always work harder than the next guy.”-Casey Neistat
>Tim Ferris: Casey Neistat’s subscriber count and success on Youtube skyrocketed when he decided on his 34th birthday to vlog daily. Shay Carl had the same experience.
16. “So if you’re planning to do something with your life, if you have a 10 year plan of how to get there, you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months?” -Peter Thiel
17. “On one level, wisdom is nothing more than the ability to take your own advice. It’s actually very easy to give people good advice. It’s very hard to follow the advice that you know is good. If someone came to me with my list of problems, I would be able to sort that person out very easily.” -Sam Harris
18. “Give vulnerability a shot. Give discomfort its due. Because he or she who is willing to be the most uncomfortable is not only the bravest, but rises the fastest.” -Brene Brown.
