Top 289 Quotes & Sayings by Tim Ferriss - Page 2

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.

Having a size 9 foot is fantastic because almost all of the shoe companies do their prototyping in size 9, so if you visit a place like Nike headquarters, you can try every sort of wacky, out-there model.

I view my job more almost as a field biologist or anthropologist, where I'm collecting practices. I'm collecting techniques.

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.

The more books there are on shelves, the more will be sold. Once you get to the level of The Secret and have 40-100 copies in many stores, managers have almost no choice but to put them in prime real estate like front-of-store, end caps, or front window.

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.

People really do think they have to choose between high stress and high reward jobs, and low stress and low reward jobs.

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.

When you're directed by social media, I think it's very easy to lose a sense of agency. And you can see it when you go to any subway station, you walk down any street in a city, you will see 70-80 percent of people staring into their phones as they walk or stand.

It's very easy to say, 'Well, hey, you should wake up at 4:30 in the morning and do what ABCD people do.' Just because it works for one person, just because it works for even many people, does not mean it will necessarily work for you.

The truth is that since the first book, I have wanted to emulate Benjamin Franklin and put together a healthy, wealthy and wise trilogy and so healthy was 'The 4-Hour Body,' wealthy was 'The 4-Hour Workweek' and then wise is 'The 4-Hour Chef.'

To make a bestseller, there are more customers than just your customers: Selling to the end-user is just one piece of the puzzle. In my case, I needed to first sell myself to the publisher to get marketing support and national retail distribution.

I'm very often described as a 'risk-taker' and 'extreme,' and there are a few examples of that, certainly in the physical experimentation.

I started using Twitter about year after its very early adoption and ended up investing in it around that same time. I'm involved with the Tech scene and companies ranging from Facebook, Stumbleupon and Twitter.

I might seem biased, but I use Evernote every day. It came to me through my readers, who I'd asked for software recommendations via Twitter and Facebook. For seemingly every function, the answer was 'Man, you have to use Evernote.'

When I left the U.S. for the first time, I spent my first year abroad in Japan. That culture shock and abundance of new stimuli combined with a lack of guidance forced me to develop my own approaches to learning and juggling.

If you walk into any bookstore, you can look at the newsstands and see which magazines are nationally-distributed, and you recognize certain names. Same with television. With the blogsphere, however, you actually have to dig, and know how to use multiple tools to figure out whom you should be speaking to.

The way we measure productivity is flawed. People checking their BlackBerry over dinner is not the measure of productivity.

I view myself as an experimentalist. I've tried everything in the book, and I have replicated results to one extent or another.

The reason I was successful in launching my first book with bloggers is this: I assumed that I should spend as much time on a blogger with a million-person readership as I would pitching an editor of a publication with a million person subscription-base.

If you start out with a little telescope observing the stars and you keep at it over the years, as I have, it's kind of a dream to one day have an observatory where you can always go and use the telescope conveniently.

I suppose my professional life can be split into writing books that all sound like infomercial products, most notably 'The 4-Hour Workweek,' and then tech investing.

I think that whenever you feel reactive or are being reactive as opposed to proactive, that inherently - consciously or subconsciously - creates a lot of stress.

I was never the most technical wrestler. But my coaches definitely instilled in me the belief that if you can push yourself and practice smarter than the other guy, you can beat him.

My parents didn't have much money growing up, but they always had a budget for books.

I was really small and had a lot of health issues growing up. I mean, not compared to some people, certainly, but I had a number of full-body blood transfusions when I was kid.

I think there's a difference between having a bestselling book - meaning through marketing, PR and buying that first wave of customers - and writing a bestselling book. The second implies that the product propels itself to the best seller list.

As far as income goes, there are three currencies in the world; most people ignore two. The three currencies are time, income and mobility, in descending order of importance. Most people focus exclusively on income.

If you take a print magazine with a million person circulation, and a blog with a devout readership of 1 million, for the purpose of selling anything that can be sold online, the blog is infinitely more powerful, because it's only a click away.

I'm very familiar with how people can confuse correlation with causation.

It's just astonishing to me, but not surprising in some respects, how dependent we are on the somewhat meaningless and certainly ephemeral feedback that we get from strangers on the Internet. I think that's a dangerous dependence to develop.

I've had a very good stretch with startup investing, and I think it's very important to know when to hold your chips.

I really feel like knife skills - not just in the kitchen, but in life - are really critical.

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

I definitely grew up with a lot of venom and distaste for city people.

I always thought I was going to end up teaching ninth grade, specifically, because I had a lot of really formative influences, I think, at that fork in the road, where a lot of crucial decisions are made by young folks.

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. David Blaine is an example of someone who's better at self-promoting than me. He is much better than I am.

I think that survivorship bias, the survivorship bias is something I'm very acutely familiar with because of investing.

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.

If you're sitting in a monastery, where your schedule is set and you have very few uncontrolled variables, that's fantastic that you can do loving/kindness meditation, but that's not the world I live in.

I gauge success in years, not weeks. The weekend box-office approach to book launches is short sighted and encourages crappy books.

Turning 40 didn't, as a number, scare me or throw me off at all.

Most of my readers think I'm obsessed with time management, but they haven't seen the other - much more legitimate, much more extreme - obsession. I've recorded almost every workout I've done since age 18. Since 2004, I've been tracking everything from complete lipid panels, insulin, and hemoglobin A1c, to IGF-1 and free testosterone.

Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.

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

An entrepreneur isn't someone who owns a business, it's someone who makes things happen.

What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it.

The way that you become world-class is... by asking good questions.

There are two components that are fundamental to enjoy life and feel good about yourself: continual learning and service.

Lack of time is actually lack of priorities.

But 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.

What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.

The most important actions are never comfortable.

You can lose money and make it back, you can't do that with time.

Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!

One can steal ideas, but no one can steal execution or passion.

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

Money doesn't change you; it reveals who you are when you no longer have to be nice.

If you don't have time, the truth is, you don't have priorities. Think harder; don't work harder.

Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.