Titan Take-aways from Tim Ferriss’ Interview with Entrepreneur
Entrepreneur magazine recently published one of their most impressive interviews yet titled “Tim Ferriss: If You’re Not Happy With What You Have, You Might Never Be Happy¹.”
What makes this article such a stand out is a succinct biography relating to values and behaviors that catapulted self-made millionaire and extreme athlete, Tim Ferriss, to success.
His eclectic background includes becoming a kickboxing champion, pursuing a neuroscience degree from Princeton, overcoming a bout with contemplating suicide, obsession with supplements and performance, which spring-boarded into marketing. In 2007 he overcame 26 rejections of 4 Hour Workweek before it sold over 2 million copies in the USA alone.
He’s just released a 704 page (you read that right) compilation of actionable patterns or advice gleaned from interviewing 200 of the world’s highest achievers.
It’s a 2+ year project in the making, with Tim conducting both the writing and interviewing. He believes in outsourcing but not ghost writing, since it can’t capture his voice or his mission to distill best practices into an applicable and repeatable process.
His newest book, Tools of Titans is his response to a lament that most business interview books offer encouraging sound bites without being actionable. For example, “active integrity” sounds great as a concept, but how do you apply it to your business or life in a way that you can track results and repeat?
As for how to discern which piece of advice from Tools of Titans best applies to the individual – Tim’s advice is to test it.
Tim shares that for almost every single decision he makes, he first asks himself, “Even if this fails, what other benefits can I derive from it?”
Yet the author of the 4 Hour Workweek has been touted as a workaholic from more than one source. He distinguishes between “perpetual busyness”² (which he admonishes is just misprioritization) and worthwhile endeavors. What’s the difference?
“Absurdity,” he responds. He counter-balances productivity with fun and lots of absurdity.
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