What might you do to accomplish your 10-year goals in the next 6 months, if you had a gun against your head? (351)
When you answer "I am grateful for... ," I recommend considering four different categories. Otherwise, you will go on autopilot and repeat the same items day after day (2792)
Write down the 3 to 5 things—and no more—that are making you the most anxious or uncomfortable. They're often things that have been punted from one day's to-do list to the next, to the next, to the next, and so on. (3615)
What, if done, will make all of the rest easier or irrelevant? (3619)
If you have a 10-year plan of how to get there, you should ask: Why can't you do this in 6 months?
For me, step one is always the same: Write down the 20% of activities and people causing 80% or more of your negative emotions. (6864)
My step two is doing a "fear-setting" exercise on paper (page 463), in which I ask and answer, "What is really the worst that could happen if I stopped doing what I'm considering? And so what? How could I undo any damage?" (6865)
Think about how old you are right now and think about being a 10-year-older version of yourself. Then think, ‘"What would I probably tell myself as an older version of myself?"" (7625)
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The following bullets are writing prompts that Cheryl has suggested when asked for assignment ideas for students who've read Wild. They are brilliant and make fantastic jumping-off points for any type of journaling or writing, whether Morning Pages (page 224), a blog post, the beginning of a novel, a letter to a friend, a diary entry, a screenplay, or a too-fast-too-soon Tinder message. (8767)
- Write about a time when you realized you were mistaken.
- Write about a lesson you learned the hard way.
- Write about a time you were inappropriately dressed for the occasion.
- Write about something you lost that you’ll never get back.
- Write about a time when you knew you’d done the right thing.
- Write about something you don’t remember.
- Write about your darkest teacher.
- Write about a memory of a physical injury.
- Write about when you knew it was over.
- Write about being loved.
- Write about what you were really thinking.
- Write about how you found your way back.
- Write about the kindness of strangers.
- Write about why you could not do it.
- Write about why you did.
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What follows are 17 questions that have dramatically changed my life. Each one is time-stamped, as they entered the picture at precise moments. (9998)
- What if I did the opposite for 48 hours? — What do I spend a silly amount of money on? How might I scratch my own itch?
- What would I do/ have/ be if I had $ 10 million? What’s my real TMI?
- What are the worst things that could happen? Could I get back here?
- If I could only work 2 hours per week on my business, what would I do?
- What if I let them make decisions up to $ 100? $ 500? $ 1,000?
- What’s the least crowded channel?
- What if I couldn’t pitch my product directly?
- What if I created my own real-world MBA?
- Do I need to make it back the way I lost it?
- What if I could only subtract to solve problems?
- What might I put in place to allow me to go off the grid for 4 to 8 weeks, with no phone or email?
- #13— Am I hunting antelope or field mice?
- Could it be that everything is fine and complete as is?
- What would this look like if it were easy?
- How can I throw money at this problem? How can I “waste” money to improve the quality of my life?
- No hurry, no pause.
- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse is recommended by many guests in this book. (480)
- Happiness by Daniel Gilbert.
- The Fog of War (Errol Morris) - Many guests recommend this. It's incredible and has an unbelievable 98% average on Rotten Tomatoes. (4026)
- How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life (4682)
- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. (5682)
- The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long" (7102)
- Plato's The Republic (7119)
- If This Is a Man and The Truce (7154)
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
- Cocktail Techniques by Kazuo Uyeda (8557)
- The Spy (8708)
- Dropping Ashes on the Buddha. It's by Zen Master Seung Sahn, who was a Korean Zen monk. (8857)
- Tara's first book, Radical Acceptance (9403)
- The Most-Gifted and Recommended Books of All Guests (10908)
- Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
- The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
- The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- Influence by Robert Cialdini
- Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
- Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman
- The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss
- The Bible
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
- The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
- Watchmen by Alan Moore
- Zero to One by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters
-
Creative Music:
- Alex Honnold, free solo climbing phenom: The Last of the Mohicans soundtrack
- Rolf Potts, author of Vagabonding and others: ambitones like The Zen Effect in the key of C for 30 minutes, made by Rolfe Kent, the composer of music for movies like Sideways, Wedding Crashers, and Legally Blonde
- Matt Mullenweg, lead developer of WordPress, CEO of Automattic: “Everyday” by A $ AP Rocky and “One Dance” by Drake
- Amelia Boone, the world’s most successful female obstacle course racer: “Tonight Tonight” by the Smashing Pumpkins and “Keep Your Eyes Open” by NEEDTOBREATHE
- Chris Young, mathematician and experimental chef: Paul Oakenfold’s “Live at the Rojan in Shanghai,” Pete Tong’s Essential Mix
- Jason Silva, TV and YouTube philosopher: “Time” from the Inception soundtrack by Hans Zimmer
- Chris Sacca: “Harlem Shake” by Baauer and “Lift Off” by Jay Z and Kanye West, featuring Beyoncé. “I can bang through an amazing amount of email with the Harlem Shake going on in the background.”
- Tim Ferriss: Currently I’m listening to “Circulation” by Beats Antique and “Black Out the Sun” by Sevendust, depending on whether I need flow or a jumpstart.
-
TF Music
- Flow album: Gran Hotel Buenos Aires by Federico Aubele
- Wake-up album: One-X by Three Days Grace The 4-Hour Body
- Flow album: Luciano Essential Mix (2009, Ibiza) featuring DeadMau5
- Wake-up album: Cold Day Memory by Sevendust The 4-Hour Chef
- Flow album: “Just Jammin’” extended single track by Gramatik
- Wake-up album: Dear Agony by Breaking Benjamin Tools of
- Flow album: I Choose Noise by Hybrid
- Wake-up album: Over the Under by Down
- Death Race, Spartan Race (1060)
- (LSD, psilocybin in "magic mushrooms," peyote, etc.) (2033)
- The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide (2160)
- maps.org
- Flotation Tank (2195)
- Wake up at least 1 hour before you have to be at a computer screen. Email is the mind-killer. (3612)
- Cold-water plunge (I use a quick cold shower, which could be just 30 to 60 seconds) (3849)
- James recommends the habit of writing down 10 ideas each morning in a waiter'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: "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. Perfectionism is the ENEMY of the idea muscle... it's your brain trying to protect you from harm, from coming up with an idea that is embarrassing and stupid and could cause you to suffer pain. The way you shut [this] off is by forcing [the brain] to come up with bad ideas. (4411)
- 10 old ideas I can make new
- 10 ridiculous things I would invent (e.g., the smart toilet)
- 10 books I can write (The Choose Yourself Guide to an Alternative Education, etc).
- 10 business ideas for Google/Amazon/Twitter/etc.
- 10 people I can send ideas to
- 10 podcast ideas or videos I can shoot (e.g., Lunch with James, a video podcast where I just have lunch with people over Skype and we chat)
- 10 industries where I can remove the middleman
- 10 things I disagree with that everyone else assumes is religion (college, home ownership, voting, doctors, etc.)
- 10 ways to take old posts of mine and make books out of them
- 10 people I want to be friends with (then figure out the first step (4437)
- 10 things I learned yesterday
- 10 things I can do differently today
- 10 ways I can save time
- 10 things I learned from X, where X is someone I've recently spoken with or read a book by or about. I've written posts on this about the Beatles, Mick Jagger, Steve Jobs, Charles Bukowski, the Dalai Lama, Superman, Freakonomics, etc.
- 10 things I'm interested in getting better at (and then
- 10 ways I can get better at each one)
- 10 things I was interested in as a kid that might be fun to explore now (Like, maybe I can write that "Son of Dr. Strange" comic I've always been planning. And now I need
- 10 plot ideas.)
- 10 ways I might try to solve a problem I have This has saved me with the IRS countless times. Unfortunately, the Department of Motor Vehicles is impervious to my superpowers.
- Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: Is this the condition that I feared? (8001)
- One manual project that every human should experience? "You need to build your own house, your own shelter. It's not that hard to do, believe me. I built my own house." (8081)
- Fear-rehearsing—regularly microdosing myself with the worst-case scenario as inoculation. There is more freedom to be gained from practicing poverty than chasing wealth. Suffer a little regularly and you often cease to suffer. (8161)
- I've scheduled deloading phases in a few ways: roughly 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. daily for journaling, tea routines, etc.; 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Wednesday for creative output (i.e., writing, interviewing for the podcast); and "screen-free Saturdays," when I use no laptops and only use my phone for maps and coordinating with friends via text (no apps). Of course, I still use "mini-retirements" à la The 4-Hour Workweek a few times a year. (9851)
- [Every morning,] what I do is based on the Morning Pages by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way. It's three longhand pages where you just keep the pen moving for three pages, no matter what. No censoring, no rereading. It's the closest thing to magic I've come across. If you really do it every day in a real disciplined practice, something happens to your subconscious that allows you to get to your most creative place. (10326)
Fortunately, 10x results don't always require 10x effort. Big changes can come in small packages. To dramatically change your life, you don't need to run a 100-mile race, get a PhD, or completely reinvent yourself. It's the small things, done consistently, that are the big. (365)
More than 80% of the interviewees have some form of daily mindfulness or meditation practice (371)
You don't "succeed" because you have no weaknesses; you succeed because you find your unique strengths and focus on developing habits around them. (417)
In place of the scale, I use DEXA scans, a BodyMetrix home ultrasound device, or calipers with a gym professional (1746)
Oddly, in polling readers, substantially more men end up at Transcendental Meditation (TM), and substantially more women end up at vipassana. (2829)
Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home. (2997)
"I wanted to go on offense. I wanted to have the time to focus, to learn the things I wanted to learn, to build what I wanted to build, and to really invest in relationships that I wanted to grow, rather than just doing a day of coffee after coffee after coffee." (3041)
Experience often deeply embeds the assumptions that need to be questioned in the first place. (3076)
Never forget that underneath all the math and the MBA bullshit talk, we are all still emotionally driven human beings. We want to attach ourselves to narratives. We don't act because of equations. We follow our beliefs. We get behind leaders who stir our feelings. (3100)
Everything around you that you call ‘life' was made up by people that were no smarter than you (3193)
"My goal is not to fail fast. My goal is to succeed over the long run. They are not the same thing." (3208)
"Andy Grove had the answer: For every metric, there should be another ‘paired' metric that addresses adverse consequences of the first metric." (3211)
"My confidence came from my vision. I am a big believer that if you have a very clear vision of where you want to go, then the rest of it is much easier. (3247)
DEREK: "Don't be a donkey." TIM: "And what does that mean?" DEREK: "Well, I meet a lot of 30-year-olds who are trying to pursue many different directions at once, but not making 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. (3414)
When that occasional, ‘Oh my God, hell yeah!' thing comes along, you don't have enough time to give it the attention that you should, because you've said yes to too much other little, half-ass stuff, right? (3447)
93-something-percent of my huffing and puffing, and all that red face and all that stress was only for an extra 2 minutes. It was basically for nothing. [So,] for life, I think of all of this maximization—getting the maximum dollar out of everything, the maximum out of every second, the maximum out of every minute—you don't need to stress about any of this stuff. Honestly, that's been my approach ever since. I do things, but I stop before anything gets stressful. (3476)
"My recommendation is to do little tests. Try a few months of living the life you think you want, but leave yourself an exit plan, being open to the big chance that you might not like it after actually trying it. The best book about this subject is Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. (3497)
Wake up at least 1 hour before you have to be at a computer screen. Email is the mind-killer. (3612)
If I have 10 important things to do in a day, it's 100% certain nothing important will get done that day. On the other hand, I can usually handle one must-do item and block out my lesser behaviors for 2 to 3 hours a day. (3628)
What you do is more important than how you do everything else, and doing something well does not make it important. (3630)
Being busy is a form of laziness - lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions. (3633)
Advice to your 20-year-old self? "Slow down. I think a lot of the mistakes of my youth were mistakes of ambition, not mistakes of sloth. So just slowing down, whether that's meditating, whether that's taking time for yourself away from screens, whether that's really focusing in on who you're talking to or who you're with." (3738)
"Stressed" is the achiever word for "fear". (3805)
Mastery doesn't come from an infographic. What you know doesn't mean shit. What do you do consistently?"(3806)
Investing in yourself is the most important investment you'll ever make in your life. There's no financial investment that'll ever match it, because if you develop more skill, more ability, more insight, more capacity, that's what's going to really provide economic freedom. It's those skill sets that really make that happen." (3813)
"If you let your learning lead to knowledge, you become a fool. If you let your learning lead to action, you become wealthy." (3816)
To fix this, he encourages you to "prime" your state first. The biochemistry will help you proactively tell yourself an enabling story. Only then do you think on strategy, as you'll see the options instead of dead ends. "Priming" my state is often as simple as doing 5 to 10 push-ups or getting 20 minutes of sun exposure (3837)
What is the ultimate quantification of success? For me, it's not how much time you spend doing what you love. It's how little time you spend doing what you hate. (3980)
Morning pages are, as author Julia Cameron puts it, "spiritual windshield wipers." (4048)
Which of these highest-value activities is the easiest for me to do? You can build an entire career on 80/20 analysis and asking this question. (4113)
"Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious."—Thomas Edison (4130)
"If you go back 20 or 25 years, I wish I would have known that there was no need to wait. I went to college. I went to law school. I worked in law and banking, though not for terribly long. But not until I started PayPal did I fully realize that you don't have to wait to start something. 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? (4161)
So when a business fails, you often don't learn anything at all because the failure was overdetermined. (4168)
I would ask questions. Why am I doing this? Am I doing this just because I have good grades and test scores and because I think it's prestigious? Or am I doing this because I'm extremely passionate about practicing law? "I think there are good answers, and there are bad answers. And my retrospective on my early 20s is that I was way too focused on the wrong answers at the time." (4197)
"Trust and attention - these are the scarce items in a post-scarcity world." (4250)
So the goal isn't to get good ideas; the goal is to get bad ideas. Because once you get enough bad ideas, then some good ones have to show up." (4263)
Some of my most popular blog posts since 2007 have been the least time-consuming but the most uncomfortable. To produce these, I usually ask myself: "What am I embarrassed to be struggling with? (4408)
James recommends the habit of writing down 10 ideas each morning in a waiter'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: "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. Perfectionism is the ENEMY of the idea muscle... it's your brain trying to protect you from harm, from coming up with an idea that is embarrassing and stupid and could cause you to suffer pain. The way you shut [this] off is by forcing [the brain] to come up with bad ideas. (4411)
"It's hard to come up with more than 3,000 business ideas a year. I'm lucky if I come up with a few business ideas. The key is to have fun with it, or else you don't do it." In his words, but condensed for space, here are some examples of the types of lists James makes: (4434)
Breaking your rules to co-invest with well-known investors is usually a bad idea, but following your rules when others reject a startup can work out extremely well. (4559)
Commit, within financial reason, to action instead of theory. Learn to confront the challenges of the real world, rather than resort to the protective womb of academia. You can control most of the risks, and you can't imagine the rewards. (4629)
Losers have goals. Winners have systems. (4643)
"systems" instead of "goals." This involves choosing projects and habits that, even if they result in "failures" in the eyes of the outside world, give you transferable skills or relationships. In other words, you choose options that allow you to inevitably "succeed" over time, as you build assets that carry over to subsequent projects. (4677)
Fundamentally, "systems" could be thought of as asking yourself, "What persistent skills or relationships can I develop?" versus "What short-term goal can I achieve?" (4679)
At first, the way I did it back in those times was I used a pencil or a pen and a piece of paper, and I wrote the same sentence 15 times, once a day, I think. (4726)
"But you can use these affirmations, presumably—this is just a hypothesis—to focus your mind and your memory on a very specific thing. And that would allow you to notice things in your environment that might have already been there. (4734)
Scott based this on what he considered Trump's hypnosis abilities and media savvy (4743)
But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths: 1) Become the best at one specific thing. 2) Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. (4792) Malcolm Gladwell (page 572) explores in his book Outliers (4862)
Many other computer companies (and their entrepreneurial owners) became rich and famous by following a simple principle: If you can't be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in. (4922)
When you launch a new product, the first question to ask yourself is not "How is this new product better than the competition?" but "First what?" In other words, what category is this new product first in? (4930)
If I had always done what I was "qualified' to do, I'd be pushing a broom somewhere. (5039)
TF: If you understand principles, you can create tactics. If you are dependent on perishable tactics, you are always at a disadvantage. This is why Ramit studies behavioral psychology and the elements of persuasion that appear hardwired. (5104)
I give away 98% of my material for free and, then, many of my flagship courses are extremely expensive. In fact, 10 to 100 times what my competitors charge." (5121)
"Free" means that 99% of what I do is free to the world (e.g., podcast, blog) or nearly free (books). I write on topics that A) I enjoy and want to learn more about, and that B) I think will attract intelligent, driven, and accomplished people. This is what allows ultra-premium. (5125)
My network, partially built through writing, is my net worth. If you want to increase your income 10x instead of 10%, the best opportunities are often seemingly out of left field (e.g., books → startups). (5136)
"Success" need not be complicated. Just start with making 1,000 people extremely, extremely happy. (5160)
True fans are not only the direct source of your income, but also your chief marketing force for the ordinary fans. (5196)
Using virtual assistants, growth-hacking techniques, and principles from Tim's books, we raised more than $100K in less than 10 days. (5288)
To discover the top referral sources, we gave our VA a list of Kickstarter projects similar to ours and asked her to list the referrers for each project. Based on this data, we decided to focus all of our attention on just two goals: Getting coverage on the right blogs Activating our networks to create buzz on Facebook, Twitter, and email (5299)
Find Relevant Bloggers Using Google Images (5305)
Occasionally, a good idea comes to you first, if you're lucky. Usually, it only comes after a lot of bad ideas. (5336)
Asking the right dumb question is often the smartest thing you can do. (5351)
Prompts to Elicit Stories (5359)
When you complain, nobody wants to help you (5505)
If you spend your time focusing on the things that are wrong, and that's what you express and project to people you know, you don't become a source of growth for people, you become a source of destruction for people. (5506)
The job I was going to do hadn't even been invented yet. The interesting jobs are the ones that you make up. That's something I certainly hope to instill in my son: Don't worry about what your job is going to be. Do things that you're interested in, and if you do them really well, you're going to find a way to temper them with some good business opportunity. (5596)
Am I basically being unfair because I'm operating from a greater set of information? (5644)
Ask for 10% off of your next few coffees. "Go up to the counter and order coffee. If you don't drink coffee, order tea. If you don't drink tea, order water. I don't care. Then just ask for 10% off. The coffee challenge sounds kind of silly, but the whole point is that—in business and in life—you don't have to be on the extreme, but you have to ask for things, and you have to put yourself out there. (5694)
For all his impotent rage, what Martial couldn't see was that it was his unique position as an outsider to society that gave him such fascinating insight into Roman culture that it survives to this day. Instead of being pained by such a system, what if he'd been able to come to terms with it? What if - gasp - he could have appreciated the opportunities it offered? (5859)
Make other people look good and you will do well. (5872)
Whereas everyone else wants to get credit and be "respected," you can forget credit. You can forget it so hard that you're glad when others get it instead of you—that was your aim, after all. Let the others take their credit on credit, while you defer and earn interest on the principal. (5915)
Sometimes you need to stop doing things you love in order to nurture the one thing that matters most. (6239)
I avoid using a past success as a proxy for the future. After all, the dirty little secret is that every success was almost a failure. Timing and uncontrollable circumstances play more of a role than any of us care to admit. (6249)
In the wrong environment, your creativity is compromised. At 30, I assumed my strengths would always be with me regardless of where I applied them. I was wrong. Truth is, your environment matters. (6254)
The more we associate experience with cash value, the more we think that money is what we need to live. And the more we associate money with life, the more we convince ourselves that we're too poor to buy our freedom. (6291)
Freedom as John Muir knew it, he wrote in his 1956 book Autumn Across America, "with its wealth of time, its unregimented days, its latitude of choice... such freedom seems more rare, more difficult to attain, more remote with each new generation." (6312)
At a certain level, the idea that freedom is tied to labor might seem a bit depressing. It shouldn't be. (6348)
When possible, always give the money to charity, as it allows you to interact with people well above your pay grade. (6560)
To me, everything is idea and execution and, if you separate idea and execution, you don't put too much pressure on either of them. (6589)
I was tired of being interchangeable, no matter how lucrative the game. (6682)
When deciding whether to commit to something, if I feel anything less than "Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!", then my answer is no. (6689)
To become "successful," you have to say "yes" to a lot of experiments. To learn what you're best at, or what you're most passionate about, you have to throw a lot against the wall. Once your life shifts from pitching outbound to defending against inbound, however, you have to ruthlessly say "no" as your default. (6692)
Once you reach a decent level of professional success, lack of opportunity won't kill you. It's drowning in "kinda cool" commitments that will sink the ship. (6700)
Great creative work isn't possible if you're trying to piece together 30 minutes here and 45 minutes there. Large, uninterrupted blocks of time—3 to 5 hours minimum—create the space needed to find and connect the dots. And one block per week isn't enough. (6707)
One could argue that I should work on my reactivity instead of avoiding stocks. I'd agree on tempering reactivity, but I'd disagree on fixing weaknesses as a primary investment (or life) strategy. All of my biggest wins have come from leveraging strengths instead of fixing weaknesses. (6745)
Domino triggers aren't limited to food. For some people, if they play 15 minutes of World of Warcraft, they'll play 15 hours. It's 0 or 15 hours. (6778)
"I am an old man and I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened." (6896)
He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary. (6898)
To "fix" someone's problem, you very often just need to empathically listen to them. (7000)
Let it go. I do mean to take life very seriously, but I need to take things like playfulness and purposelessness very seriously. (7019)
"Write to please just one person" - what he was really saying was write for yourself. The second you start doing it for an audience, you've lost the long game because creating something that is rewarding and sustainable over the long run requires, most of all, keeping yourself excited about it. (7094)
"My mantra is a very simple one, and that's "Discipline equals freedom". TF: I interpret this to mean, among other things, that you can use positive constraints to increase perceived free will and results. Freeform days might seem idyllic, but they are paralyzing due to continual paradox of choice (e.g., "What should I do now?") and decision fatigue (e.g., "What should I have for breakfast?"). In contrast, something as simple as pre-scheduled workouts acts as scaffolding around which you can more effectively plan and execute your day. "It also means that if you want freedom in life—be that financial freedom, more free time, or even freedom from sickness and poor health—you can only achieve these things through discipline".
He told me shirtless pics and animals were "like crack." I didn't believe him, so we tested roughly a dozen of my preexisting profile pics alongside a new, shirtless pic of me with a kitten held over my shoulder. It was an embarrassing, ludicrous pic. Even Neil Strauss didn't want it to win. Alas, it did. (7385)
It also puts discipline in the day. I find that if the day is terrible, but I worked out, at the end of the day I'll go, "Well, I had a good workout", almost no matter what happens. (7541)
Stan consumes most of his books as audiobooks, a habit acquired overseas, as print books are cumbersome to lug around on deployment. He probably now "reads" via audio 70% of the time. (7563)
I learned to run with audiobooks. My mind will stay collected on it when I lift weights. I also have a little set of speakers in my bathroom. So I go in in the morning, and I'm listening to one book there. (7565)
I've found that I go through books very, very quickly, because if you're working out an hour and a half a day, you actually go through books much faster than you would if you just had reading time. (7568)
You can tell the true character of a man by how his dog and his kids react to him. (7586)
You might be thinking about "How can I do my coursework as well as possible?" and micro optimization, but not really thinking about "What are actually my ultimate goals in life, and how can I optimize toward them?" (7700)
An analogy I use is, if you're going out for dinner, it's going to take you a couple of hours. You spend 5 minutes working out where to go for dinner. It seems reasonable to spend 5% of your time on how to spend the remaining 95%. If you did that with your career, that would be 4,000 hours, or 2 working years. And actually, I think that's a pretty legitimate thing to do—spending that length of time trying to work out how should you be spending the rest of your life. (7702)
It's not giving up to put your current path on indefinite pause. He could pick up his law career exactly where he left off if he wanted to, but that is the furthest thing from his mind. (7971)
Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty. (7980)
There was practically no risk, only huge life-changing upside potential, and I could resume my previous course without any more effort than I was already putting forth. (8015)
Write down your answers, and keep in mind that thinking a lot will not prove as fruitful or as prolific as simply brain-vomiting on the page. (8023)
Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering. (8025)
What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily? Chances are, it's easier than you imagine. How could you get things back under control? (8029)
What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do. (8039)
As I have heard said, a person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. (8040)
What I discovered, which is what many writers discover, is that I write in order to think. I'd say, "I think I have an idea," but when I begin to write it, I realize, I have no idea, and I don't actually know what I think until I try and write it. That was the revelation. (8084)
Many, many people are working very hard, trying to save their money to retire so they can travel. Well, I decided to flip it around and travel when I was really young, when I had zero money. And I had experiences that, basically, even a billion dollars couldn't have bought." (8093)
It's the ones that keep coming back that I can't kill and I can't give away, that make me think, Hmmm, maybe that's the one I'm supposed to do. (8102)
Well, the worst that can happen is that I'd have a backpack and a sleeping bag, and I'd be eating oatmeal. And I'd be fine. (8118)
Perfectionism leads to procrastination, which leads to paralysis. (8181)
And in order for art to imitate life, you have to have a life. TIM: "That's a really profound statement." WHITNEY: "For me, art was imitating art because all I was doing was working." (8186)
There are three things you can't really fake: one is fighting, the second is sex, and the third is comedy. (8288)
The moments when your own path is at its most ambiguous, [that's when] the voices of others, the distracting chaos in which we live, the social media static start to loom large and become very threatening. (8335)
Which philosophers would Alain suggest for practical living? Alain's list overlaps nearly 100% with my own: Epicurus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Michel de Montaigne, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell. (8344)
This busyness is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it's something we've chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it. (8396)
She once ruefully summarized dating in New York: "Everyone is too busy and everyone thinks they can do better." What she had mistakenly assumed was her personality—driven, cranky, anxious, and sad—turned out to be a deformative effect of her environment, of the crushing atmospheric pressure of ambition and competitiveness. (8400)
Them flightless, easy prey. I can't help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn't a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn't matter. (8407)
I know how heretical it sounds in America, but there's really no reason we shouldn't regard drudgery as an evil to rid the world of if possible, like polio. It was the Puritans who perverted work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment. Now that the old taskmaster is out of office, maybe we could all take a long smoke break. (8450)
Even though my own resolute idleness has mostly been a luxury rather than a virtue, I did make a conscious decision, a long time ago, to choose time over money, since you can always make more money. And I've always understood that the best investment of my limited time on earth is to spend it with people I love. (8460)
I'm telling you, a single question about goulash could get me 6 weeks of lodging and meals, and that's how I got passed around the world. 10 years. 10 years." (8505)
A Question Cal Suggests Asking People More Often "What are some of the choices you've made that made you who you are?" (8523)
Often, exercise will make me feel better, meditating will make me feel better, but the ice bath is the greatest of all. It's just magic—sauna, ice, back and forth. By the end of the fourth, or fifth, or sixth round of being in an ice tub, there is nothing in the world that bothers you. (8579)
The idea of watering things down for a mainstream audience, I don't think it applies. I think people want things that are really passionate, and often, the best version they could be is not for everybody. The best art divides the audience (8595)
There are only four stories: a love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power, and the journey. Every single book that is in the bookstore deals with these four archetypes, these four themes. (8700)
The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion. (8703)
Probably, this is my inner ritual. I have to feel guilty about not writing for 3 hours or 4 hours. Then, when I'm there, I start writing and it's nonstop. (8721)
There is this notepad by my side, and I take notes, but I take notes only to take them out from my head. They will be useless the next day. (8725)
General fame is overrated. You want to be famous to 2,000 to 3,000 people you handpick. (8887)
When I was 30, I guess I was still struggling to stay in or get out of academics. What I didn't realize is that the structure of the (9016)
Universities was either hitting steady state, or growing very little, or shrinking. (9017)
If you want to be successful, surround yourself with people who are more successful than you are, but if you want to be happy, surround yourself with people who are less successful than you are. (9259)
In any situation in life, you only have three options. You always have three options. You can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you would leave it but not leaving it, and not accepting it. It's that struggle, that aversion, that is responsible for most of our misery. The phrase that I probably use the most to myself in my head is just one word: accept." (9266)
Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. (9314)
Be present above all else. Desire is suffering (Buddha). Anger is a hot coal that you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at someone else (Buddhist saying). If you can't see yourself working with someone for life, don't work with them for a day. Reading (learning) is the ultimate meta-skill and can be traded for anything else. All the real benefits in life come from compound interest. Earn with your mind, not your time. 99% of all effort is wasted. Total honesty at all times. It's almost always possible to be honest and positive. Praise specifically, criticize generally (Warren Buffett). Truth is that which has predictive power. Watch every thought. (Always ask, "Why am I having this thought?") All greatness comes from suffering. Love is given, not received. Enlightenment is the space between your thoughts (Eckhart Tolle). Mathematics is the language of nature. Every moment has to be complete in and of itself. (9322)
The opposite happened. I had grown up in a world where everything was manufactured, everything was written, timed, produced perfectly. What I realized that day was people are starving for something authentic. They'll accept you, warts and all, if that's who you really are. Once you start lying to them, they're not interested. We're all alike. So the best advice I learned by mistake, and that is: Be willing to fail or succeed on who you really are. Don't ever try to be anything else. (9374)
Don't be so fucking shy. Dude, I can still think of instances within the last 24 months where I think, ‘Man, Richard, I wish you had been more forward. I wish you had asked for X instead of being so subtle and implying it.' (9560)
So I thought, I'm always on time, and I always show up to things, so why don't I do that for myself? (9597)
Don't bow to the gatekeepers because I think, in essence, there are no gatekeepers. You are the gatekeeper. "Don't waste your time on marketing, just try to get better. "And also, it's not about being good; it's about being great. (9627)
And avoids nearly all meetings and phone calls. He minimizes input to maximize output, much like Rick Rubin. Josh says: "I cultivate empty space as a way of life for the creative process." (9736)
The big question I ask is, "When I had the opportunity, did I choose courage over comfort?" (9887)
Perhaps the biggest tragedy in our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns. (10294)
What past limitations—real or perceived—are you carrying as baggage? Where in your life are you pacing in a 10-by-10-foot patch of grass? Where are you afraid of getting sprayed with water, even though it's never happened? Oftentimes, everything you want is a mere inch outside of your comfort zone. Test it. (10296)
- Below are questions I've collected or concocted for just this hypothetical situation. (10885)
- When you think of the word "successful", who’s the first person who comes to mind and why?
- What is something you believe that other people think is insane? What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift? What is your favorite documentary or movie?
- What purchase of $ 100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last 6 months?
- What are your morning rituals?
- What do the first 60 minutes of your day look like?
- What obsessions do you explore on the evenings or weekends?
- What topic would you speak about if you were asked to give a TED talk on something outside of your main area of expertise?
- What is the best or most worthwhile investment you’ve made? Could be an investment of money, time, energy, or other resource. How did you decide to make the investment?
- Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?
- What is the worst advice you see or hear being dispensed in your world?
- If you could have one gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say?
- What advice would you give to your 20-, 25-, or 30-year-old self? And please place where you were at the time, and what you were doing.
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Or, do you have a favorite failure of yours?
- What is something really weird or unsettling that happens to you on a regular basis?
- What have you changed your mind about in the last few years? Why?
- What do you believe is true, even though you can't prove it?
After a 10-day fast, I had lost zero muscle mass. In contrast, I lost nearly 12 pounds of muscle in that first 7-day fast. (851)
I primarily use KetoCaNa and caprylic acid (C8), like Brain Octane. The exogenous ketones help "fill the gap" for the 1 to 3 days that you might suffer carb withdrawal. Once you're in deep ketosis and using body fat, they can be omitted. (862)
High protein and low fat doesn't work. Your liver will convert excess amino acids into glucose and shut down ketogenesis. Fat as 70 to 85% of calories is required. (881)
Dom will both drink fat between meals (e.g., coconut milk—not water—in coffee) and add in supplemental "ice cream," detailed on page 29. (886)
It's easy to eat a disgusting amount of cheese to stay in keto. Consider coconut milk (Aroy-D Pure Coconut Milk) instead. (889)
Dom's Recipe for Keto Ice Cream (914)
Dom's Go-To Supplements (932)
Supplemental ketones to consistently achieve 2.5 to 3.5 mmol. The easiest options are KetoCaNa and/or Quest Nutrition MCT Oil Powder. (976)
Ursolic acid helps with body recomposition. (1025)
If you are in ketosis, drinking exogenous ketones pre- and intra-workout can substitute for carbs. (1032)
In place of the scale, I use DEXA scans, a BodyMetrix home ultrasound device, or calipers with a gym professional (1746)
With the grip, you are taking advantage of the neurological phenomenon of irradiation—tension ‘radiates' from the gripping muscles into other muscles. (1845)
"The most direct route to elite grip strength is IronMind's Captains of Crush Grippers [which are available up to 365-pound resistance]. (1846)
25 years was eradicated after 48 hours of "medicine work" 2 years ago, for reasons still not entirely clear, (2030)
For me, moderate to high dose of psilocybin with supervision serves as a hard reboot. It closes all the windows, "force quits" all the applications, flushes the cache, installs upgrades, and—when I'm back to "normal"—restores my 30,000-foot view. (2094)
The first time I used psilocybin at sufficiently high doses, the anxiolytic—anxiety decreasing—effect lasted 3 to 6 months. (2096)
Low enough doses (i.e., 100 mcg of LSD or 200 mg of mescaline) can immensely increase the capacity to solve problems. (2116)
Hofmann microdosed LSD often for the last few decades of his life. He remained sharp until he died at 101. (2131)
For me, ayahuasca has been unique among psychedelics for many reasons. (2219)
I feel like ayahuasca warrants this level of caution, respect, preparation, and due diligence. (2236)
birth and age 4. From a developmental psychological perspective, this is when most of the long-term personality traits are formed. (2241)
The typical ibogaine experience is long-lasting—up to 36 hours total—and has three major phases. (2338)
Go-To Multivitamin The whole-food based Nutriforce WODPak (Nutriforce Sports). (2489)
The use of psychedelic drugs, which is not quite the same as meditation, but it does, if nothing else, reveal that the human nervous system is plastic in a very important way, which means your experience of the world can be radically transformed. (7815)