In Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss shares the habits and beliefs of 101 high-performing people, including tech investors, entrepreneurs, athletes, and entertainers. The premise of the book is that if you emulate the habits and beliefs of people who succeed the way you want to succeed, you too can be successful.
For this summary, we’ve restructured the book completely, focusing on the major themes of habits across all 101 people. This lets you see the patterns of what the titans do—how they motivate themselves, how they succeed in work and business, how they stay happy, and how they stay healthy.
Many titans visualize their long-term goals, so it becomes easier to know what they’re fighting for. Arnold Schwarzenegger believes that having a clear vision of the final goal makes the work in between easier. It helps you stomach all the hard work and pain it takes to reach your goal, since you know why you’re pushing so hard.
Do you have a big goal you would love to tackle, but you don’t feel ready? You’ve likely put artificial constraints on yourself. Many titans spoke about pushing past artificial boundaries placed on them by society or by themselves.
Realize that every titan you admire started out where you are today—with formidable obstacles towering in front of you. The difference with the titans is they had the courage to push past these obstacles.
If you ever feel afraid of doing something, try Tim Ferriss’s fear exercise. First, think about the change you want to make.
After this exercise, you likely realize that the worst case is nowhere near permanently crippling. Even if you fail, you’ll be able to recover your old life just fine.
Once you’ve identified your goals, you need to put in the work to reach them. Here are strategies to be more productive and make more progress in the limited time you have.
Does life feel busy to you? It doesn’t have to. If you feel like you’re spinning your wheels and moving really fast, but not making any progress in life, you probably have to focus your goals.
The titans in this book have hundreds-fold more opportunities than the typical person, but they don’t have any more time. This means they need to apply a laser-sharp focus to the opportunities that will fulfill their goals.
In a world of endless options, it can be hard to decide what to focus on and build your career around. Here’s some advice.
Become a double/triple threat. Many people try to become the very best in the world at one specific thing, the equivalent of playing basketball well enough to make the NBA. But this is very competitive and has a low probability of success. Instead, you can easily become above average at two or more things, then combine them to great effect.
Work in an area where you’re not easily replaceable. This is where you can make a unique impact.
The people profiled in the book tend to be exceptionally disciplined and goal-oriented. Here are themes of advice on personal habits.
Are you obsessed with learning new tactics, but have a problem following through?
Realize that success doesn’t come from knowledge, it comes from action.
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In the 707-page Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss shares the habits and beliefs of 101 high-performing people, including tech investors, entrepreneurs, athletes, and entertainers. The premise of the book is that if you emulate the habits and beliefs of people who succeed the way you want to succeed, you too can be successful.
The book is very broad, covering a wide range of aspects on how to become healthy, wealthy, and wise. The point of the book is not to absorb everything covered, but rather to identify the points that most resonate with you. The author notes that different readers highlight very different points from the book as their most...
We’ll start with the foundation of success—how to set goals and adopt a courageous mindset.
If you don’t know where you’re going, why are you pedaling so hard?
Many titans visualize their long-term goals, so it becomes easier to know what they’re fighting for. It also becomes easier to focus, since you know what won’t drive you closer to your goals and thus can say no to.
Specific tips from titans:
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If you feel afraid of doing something, try this fear exercise.
What change do you really want to make in your life, but are afraid to?
Once you’ve identified your goals, you need to put in the work to reach them. Here are strategies to be more productive and make more progress in the limited time you have.
Does life feel busy to you? It doesn’t have to. If you feel like you’re spinning your wheels and moving really fast, but not making any progress in life, you probably have to focus your goals.
The titans in this book have hundreds-fold more opportunities than the typical person, but they don’t have any more time. This means they need to apply a laser-sharp focus to the opportunities that will fulfill their goals.
First, let’s examine why people tend to stay “busy,” at the expense of focus:
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If you feel like you have too many things going on, narrow down on the few things that matter.
What busy work do you do each day that doesn’t move you closer to your goals?
The people profiled in the book tend to be exceptionally disciplined and goal-oriented. Here are themes of advice on personal habits.
Are you obsessed with learning new tactics, but have a problem following through? Realize that success doesn’t come from knowledge, it comes from action.
(Shortform note: This especially applies when reading nonfiction material like this book summary. Don’t just absorb the platitudes—think hard about what actionables you want to apply to your life.)
Here are quotes and stories around taking action:
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No matter what field of work you’re in, you’d likely benefit from being more creative and generating more good ideas. Here’s a spread of advice on how to generate more good ideas, how to identify the best ones, and how to put them to action.
Do you struggle to find that one perfect idea, and hold yourself back from entertaining less-than-perfect ideas?
Your bar is set too high. Spend your energy coming up with LOTS of ideas, even if they’re silly. What matters isn’t your hit rate, but rather the number of good ideas you have at the end. The more ideas you generate, the more you exercise your “idea muscle.”
Multiple people reinforce this idea:
Many of the titans interviewed are entrepreneurs of some kind—often by building businesses, or by being self-employed as authors, entertainers, or media creators. These are the titans’ tips for how to start a successful business and grow it.
To be successful, you don’t need to be a global superstar or have millions of followers.
Instead, you need just 1,000 true fans (a concept popularized by Wired founding executive editor Kevin Kelly). A true fan is defined as “a fan who will buy anything you produce.” True fans become your direct source of income and the major marketing force for ordinary fans.
If you can get true fans, then you’re sure that you’re solving problems for a real group of people. Produce work to excite your 1,000 true fans, not to get a lukewarm reception from 100,000 people.
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Being productive and reaching your goals obviously aren’t the only important things in life. Being happy and in control of your emotions is another form of success important to titans.
Founder and investor Naval Ravikant asserts that happiness is 1) an active choice you make, and 2) a skill you develop, like exercising a muscle.
One of the most common themes from titans through the entire book was being grateful for life and what it’s given so far. Far from being the cutthroat, take-no-prisoners stereotype of success, the titans tended to reflect on their lives and be thankful for where they are.
Here’s a summary of how people feel gratitude:
Be thankful for small things in life and put things into perspective.
Think of 3 things you’re grateful for. Instead of repeating the same things like your health, consider small things, like an old relationship that really helped you, something great that you saw happen, or something simple that you can see.
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Here is a wide variety of less commonly-repeated ideas from Tools of Titans. There are many more ideas in the original book than we have space to cover here, so as always, read the original book to get all the useful tips.
Titans mentioned various childhood influences that made them who they are today, or practices they use with their kids:
The titans give a broad set of advice for health, but unlike the major themes above, the health advice tends to be more varied. We’ve catalogued the breadth of ideas here.
Change the phrase “diet and exercise” to “eat and train.” The former is aesthetic and doesn’t have a clear goal; the other is functional and has a clear goal.
Work on the deficiencies you’re most embarrassed by. This is true in athletics and beyond. All the flexible yoga practitioners should lift some weights, and all the huge weightlifters should do yoga.
Flexibility is a passive trait. Mobility is an active trait, requiring strength through the entire range of motion.
How to find a good doctor:
Be around people who can push you.
Here are exercises mentioned throughout the...
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Tim Ferriss has a set of 17 questions he uses to challenge his thinking.
If you’re stuck and not getting the performance you want, maybe you need to invert what you’re doing. If you try the opposite for just 48 hours, the damage is limited—at worst, you fail and go back to your normal routine. At best, you find a totally new successful way to do things.
As a salesman for a tech product early in his career, Tim wasn’t meeting his sales numbers. At a loss for what to do, he looked at what the other salespeople were doing, and decided to do the opposite. Other people worked 9 to 5; Tim decided to call outside of 9 to 5. He found that he was able to reach executives, who were still working outside normal business hours, and bypass their assistants, who were not.
This is a perfect question if you want to start a business but you don’t know what problem to solve. Chances are, you’ve been solving that problem for yourself.
When the dotcom crash happened, Tim Ferriss wanted to start his own company. Instead of doing deep market...
Try some of Tim Ferriss’s favorite questions.
Think of a problem you’re not making progress on. What if you do the opposite of what you normally do, for 48 hours? What would that look like?
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Here’s a compilation of items for hiring, asking good questions, and solving your life problems.
Here are questions that titans love asking in their hiring interviews: