Tools of Titans
Page 65
Perhaps 16 hours after the refrigerator talk, I was totally spent and ready for a good sweat and cooldown. Solo, I headed out to the barrel sauna and sat down to breathe in the smell of cedar. The perspiration slowly poured out, like the day’s tension, and I reached the end of Zen in the Art of Archery. One passage, involving the parting comments of the Japanese master, caused me to stop for several minutes. I’ve slightly abridged it here:
I must only warn you of one thing. You have become a different person in the course of these years. For this is what the art of archery means: a profound and far-reaching contest of the archer with himself. Perhaps you have hardly noticed it yet, but you will feel it very strongly when you meet your friends and acquaintances again in your own country: things will no longer harmonize as before. You will see with other eyes and measure with other measures. [It has happened to me too, and it happens to all who are touched by the spirit of this art.]
In farewell, and yet not in farewell, the Master handed me his best bow. “When you shoot with this bow you will feel the spirit of the Master near you. . . .”
This made me smile.
For the nerds among you, it made me think of the end of Return of the Jedi, after the Alliance defeats the Galactic Empire, when Luke Skywalker looks up into the night sky of Endor (bear with me) to see the shimmering and smiling spirit figures of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and Anakin Skywalker.
The first two were with him all along, and all three would be with him forever.
It is my hope that when you read and reread this book, you will feel the spirit of these titans with you. No matter the hardship, challenge, or grand ambition before you, they are here.
You are not alone, and you are better than you think. As Jocko would say: Get after it.
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* It makes a lot more sense if you’ve done psychedelics.
For more mischief . . . fourhourworkweek.com/friday
The Top 25 Episodes of The Tim Ferriss Show
Here are the top-25 most popular episodes of The Tim Ferriss Show as of September 2016. All episodes can be found on fourhourworkweek.com/podcast and itunes.com/timferriss
“Jamie Foxx on Workout Routines, Success Habits, and Untold Hollywood Stories” (episode 124)
“Tony Robbins on Morning Routines, Peak Performance, and Mastering Money” (episode 37)
“The Scariest Navy SEAL Imaginable . . . and What He Taught Me” (episode 107)
“Tony Robbins—On Achievement Versus Fulfillment” (episode 178)
“Lessons from Geniuses, Billionaires, and Tinkerers” (episode 173)
“Tim Ferriss Interviews Arnold Schwarzenegger on Psychological Warfare (and Much More)” (episode 60)
“The Secrets of Gymnastic Strength Training” (episode 158)
“How Seth Godin Manages His Life—Rules, Principles, and Obsessions” (episode 138)
“Dom D’Agostino on Fasting, Ketosis, and the End of Cancer” (episode 117)
“Charles Poliquin on Strength Training, Shredding Body Fat, and Increasing Testosterone and Sex Drive” (episode 91)
“5 Morning Rituals that Help Me Win the Day” (episode 105)
“Shay Carl—From Manual Laborer to 2.3 Billion YouTube Views” (episode 170)
“Tony Robbins on Morning Routines, Peak Performance, and Mastering Money (Part 2)” (episode 38)
“The Science of Strength and Simplicity with Pavel Tsatsouline” (episode 55)
“Dissecting the Success of Malcolm Gladwell” (episode 168)
“Kevin Rose” (episode 1)
“How to 10x Your Results, One Tiny Tweak at a Time” (episode 144)
“The Importance of Being Dirty: Lessons from Mike Rowe” (episode 157)
“The Interview Master: Cal Fussman and the Power of Listening” (episode 145)
“The Man Who Studied 1,000 Deaths to Learn How to Live” (episode 153)
“Kevin Kelly—AI, Virtual Reality, and the Inevitable” (episode 164)
“Dom D’Agostino—The Power of the Ketogenic Diet” (episode 172)
“Tools and Tricks from the #30 Employee at Facebook” (episode 75)
“Marc Andreessen—Lessons, Predictions, and Recommendations from an Icon” (episode 163)
“Tara Brach on Meditation and Overcoming FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)” (episode 94)
My Rapid-Fire Questions
If you ended up sitting next to a Nobel Prize winner or billionaire, what would you ask them? If you only had 2 to 5 minutes and they were willing to talk, how could you make the most of it?
Below are questions I’ve collected or concocted for just this hypothetical situation. Many of them are the “rapid-fire questions” that I ask nearly every guest on The Tim Ferriss Show. A handful are adapted from questions I picked up from guests themselves (such as Peter Thiel, page 232, and Marc Andreessen, page 170).
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?
Any ask or request for my audience? Last parting words?
The Most-Gifted and Recommended Books of All Guests
This is what you’ve been asking me for!
A note on formatting:
Bolded books are “most-gifted book” answers.
Bolded and underlined books are “most-gifted book” answers that did not appear in the podcast episode but that guests sent me afterward.
Unbolded books were recommended or mentioned by the guest, but not specifically “most-gifted.”
Which books came up the most? Here are the top 17—everything with 3 or more mentions—in descending order of frequency:
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (5 mentions)
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (4)
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (4)
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (4)
The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss (4)
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande (4)
Dune by Frank Herbert (3)
Influence by Robert Cialdini (3)
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert (3)
Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom (3)
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman (3)
The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss (3)
The Bible (3)
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz (3)
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (3)
Watchmen by Alan Moore (3)
Zero to One by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters (3)
Enjoy!
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Adams, Scott: Influence (Robert B. Cialdini)
Altucher, James: Jesus’ Son: Stories (Denis Johnson), The Kite Runner; A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini), Antifragile; The Black Swan; Fooled by Randomness (Nassim Nicholas Taleb), Brain Rules (John Medina), Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell), Freakonomics (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner)
Amoruso, Sophia: The Richest Man in Babylon (George Samuel Clason), No Man’s Land: Where Growing Companies Fail (Doug Tatum), Venture Deals (Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson), Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties (Rainer Maria Rilke)
Andreessen, Marc: High Output Management; Only the Paranoid Survive (Andrew S. Grove), Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (Peter Thiel with Blake Masters), Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (Neal Gabler), Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography (David Michaelis), The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World (Randall E. Stross), Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life (Steve Martin), The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz)
Arnold, Patrick: Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero (Chris Matthews), From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs (Andrew Weil), Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond)
Attia, Peter: Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts (Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson), Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Richard P. Feynman), 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story (Dan Harris)
Beck, Glenn: The Book of Virtues (William J. Bennett), Winners Never Cheat (Jon Huntsman)
Bell, Mark: COAN: The Man, The Myth, The Method: The Life, Times & Training of the Greatest Powerlifter of All-Time (Marty Gallagher)
Belsky, Scott: Life’s Little Instruction Book (H. Jackson Brown, Jr.)
Betts, Richard: A Fan’s Notes (Frederick Exley), The Crossroads of Should and Must (Elle Luna)
Birbiglia, Mike: The Promise of Sleep (William C. Dement)
Blumberg, Alex: On the Run (Alice Goffman), Hiroshima (John Hersey)
Boone, Amelia: House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski)
Boreta, Justin: Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (Oliver Sacks), Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (Sam Harris), This Is Your Brain on Music (Daniel J. Levitin), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera)
Brach, Tara: The Essential Rumi (Jalal al-Din Rumi, Coleman Barks translation), When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Pema Chödrön), The Shallows (Nicholas Carr), A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life (Jack Kornfield)
Brewer, Travis: Autobiography of a Yogi (Paramahansa Yogananda), Be Here Now (Ram Dass), Conversations with God (Neale Donald Walsch)
Brown, Brené: The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
Callen, Bryan: Excellent Sheep (William Deresiewicz), Atlas Shrugged; The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand), The Power of Myth; The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell), The Genealogy of Morals (Friedrich Nietzsche), The Art of Learning (Josh Waitzkin), The 4-Hour Body; The 4-Hour Workweek (Tim Ferriss), Bad Science, Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients (Ben Goldacre), Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005 (Thomas Ricks), The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11; Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (Lawrence Wright), Symposium (Plato)
Carl, Shay: The Book of Mormon (Joseph Smith Jr.), As a Man Thinketh (James Allen), How to Win Friends & Influence People (Dale Carnegie), Think and Grow Rich (Napoleon Hill), The Total Money Makeover (Dave Ramsey), The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen R. Covey), The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker)
Catmull, Ed: One Monster After Another (Mercer Mayer)
Chin, Jimmy: Musashi: An Epic Novel of the Samurai Era (Eiji Yoshikawa and Charles Terry), A Guide to the I Ching (Carol K. Anthony), Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (Jon Krakauer)
Cho, Margaret: How to Be a Movie Star (William J. Mann)
Cooke, Ed: The Age of Wonder (Richard Holmes), Touching the Rock (John M. Hull), In Praise of Idleness: And Other Essays (Bertrand Russell), The Sorrows of Young Werther; Theory of Colours; Maxims and Reflections (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), The Joyous Cosmology (Alan Watts)
Cummings, Whitney: Super Sad True Love Story (Gary Shteyngart), The Drama of the Gifted Child (Alice Miller), The Fantasy Bond (Robert W. Firestone), The Continuum Concept (Jean Liedloff)
D’Agostino, Dominic: Personal Power (Tony Robbins), Tripping Over the Truth (Travis Christofferson), The Language of God (Francis Collins), The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis), Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer (Thomas Seyfried), Ketogenic Diabetes Diet: Type 2 Diabetes (Ellen Davis, MS, and Keith Runyan, MD), Fight Cancer with a Ketogenic Diet (Ellen Davis, MS)
de Botton, Alain: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera), The Complete Essays (Michel de Montaigne), In Search of Lost Time (Marcel Proust)
De Sena, Joe: A Message to Garcia (Elbert Hubbard), Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand), Shōgun (James Clavell), The One Minute Manager (Kenneth H. Blanchard)
Diamandis, Peter: The Spirit of St. Louis (Charles Lindbergh), The Man Who Sold the Moon (Robert A. Heinlein), The Singularity Is Near (Ray Kurzweil), Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand), Stone Soup story
DiNunzio, Tracy: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t (Jim Collins), The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (Brad Stone)
Dubner, Stephen: For adults: Levels of the Game (John McPhee); for kids: The Empty Pot (Demi)
Eisen, Jonathan: National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America (Jon L. Dunn and Jonathan Alderfer)
Engle, Dan: Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (Esther Perel), The Cosmic Serpent (Jeremy Narby), Autobiography of a Yogi (Paramahansa Yogananda)
Fadiman, James: Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story; Tihkal: The Continuation (Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin)
Favreau, Jon: The Writer’s Journey (Christopher Vogler and Michele Montez), It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here (Charles Grodin), The 4-Hour Body (Tim Ferriss), The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien), Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain)
Foxx, Jamie: Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (James Allen)
Fussell, Chris: Gates of Fire (Steven Pressfield), Steve Jobs; The Innovators (Walter Isaacson)
Fussman, Cal: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez), Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates), Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln: 21 Powerful Secrets of History’s Greatest Speakers (James C. Humes), A Feast of Snakes; Car (Harry Crews)
Ganju, Nick: Don’t Make Me Think (Steve Krug), How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business (Douglas W. Hubbard), How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking (Jordan Ellenberg), Getting to Yes (Roger Fisher and William Ury)
Gazzaley, Adam: Foundation (Isaac Asimov), The Reality Dysfunction (The Night’s Dawn Trilogy) (Peter F. Hamilton), Mountain Light (Galen Rowell)
Gladwell, Malcolm: Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Timothy D. Wilson), Merchant Princes: An Intimate History of Jewish Families Who Built Great Department Stores (Leon A. Harris), Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Little Drummer’s Girl; The Russia House; The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (John le Carré), The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (Michael Lewis), The Checklist Manifesto (Atul Gawande), all of Lee Child’s books
Godin, Seth:
Makers; Little Brother (Cory Doctorow), Understanding Comics (Scott McCloud), Snow Crash; The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson), Dune (Frank Herbert), Pattern Recognition (William Gibson) AUDIOBOOKS: The Recorded Works (Pema Chödrön), Debt (David Graeber), Just Kids (Patti Smith), The Art of Possibility (Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander), Zig Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Sale (Zig Ziglar), The War of Art (Steven Pressfield)
Goldberg, Evan: Love You Forever (Robert Munsch), Watchmen; V for Vendetta (Alan Moore), Preacher (Garth Ennis), The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams), The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
Goodman, Marc: One Police Plaza (William Caunitz), The 4-Hour Workweek (Tim Ferriss), The Singularity Is Near (Ray Kurzweil), Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Nick Bostrom)
Hamilton, Laird: The Bible, Natural Born Heroes (Christopher McDougall), Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien), Deep Survival (Laurence Gonzales), Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Richard Bach and Russell Munson), Dune (Frank Herbert)
Harris, Sam: A History of Western Philosophy (Bertrand Russell), Reasons and Persons (Derek Parfit), The Last Word; Mortal Questions (Thomas Nagel), Our Final Invention (James Barrat), Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Nick Bostrom), Humiliation; The Anatomy of Disgust (William Ian Miller), The Flight of the Garuda: The Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism (Keith Dowman), I Am That (Nisargadatta Maharaj), Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak (Jean Hatzfeld), God Is Not Great; Hitch-22 (Christopher Hitchens), Stumbling on Happiness (Daniel Gilbert), The Qur’an