Cody Reads: Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss

Cody Reads Volume #1: Tools of Titans 

Hello all,

In my downtime and travel time as a professional athlete, I have the luxury of reading a lot of books.  

For those of you that don’t have that luxury, I am going to begin sharing some of my favorite chunks of books I have read in the past few years. 

Up first? Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers by Tim Ferriss, an amazing amalgamation of interviews from 200+ world-class performers. (Ferriss’ commentary denoted by TF: my own by CK: )  

Don’t Overestimate the People on Pedestals

“Get inside the heads of the people who made things in the past and what the were actually like, and then realize that they’re not that different you. At the time they got started, they were kind of just like you…so there’s nothing stopping any of the rest of us from doing the same thing.”  -Marc Andreessen

TF: Both Marc and Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, have read and recommended Neal Gabler’s biography of Walt Disney. Marc also mentioned a Steve Jobs quote in our conversation, which is printed in full below. It as recorded in a 1995 interview conducted by the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association, while Jobs was still at NeXT:

“Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

CK:  For more stories and interviews from modern-day people who have made things, see Guy Raz’s How I Built This podcast. The other co-founder of Airbnb, Joe Gebbia, gives a great interview on the August 28, 2017 episode. It’s fun to remember that a mere ten years ago people would have thought the entire concept of Airbnb was absolutely nuts (some still do). Airbnb was recently valued at $31 billion. 

Loving Thoughts

“In many of my public talks, I guide a very simple 10-second exercise. I tell the audience members to each identify two human beings in the room and just think “I wish for this person to be happy, and I wish for that person to be happy.” That is it…Everybody emerges from this exercise smiling, happier than 10 seconds before. This is the joy of loving-kindness. It turns out that being on the giving end of kind thoughts is rewarding in and of itself.

I tend to do a single 3- to 5- minute session at night, thinking of three people I want to be happy, often two current friends and one friend I haven’t seen in years. This loving-kindness drill takes the focus off of you entirely – which, for me, immediately resolves at least 90% of the mental chatter.”

A Focus on “Me”= Suffering 

“This brain inside our heads is a 2-million-year-old brain…It’s ancient, old survival software that is running you a good deal of time. Whenever you’re suffering, that survival software is there. The reason you’re suffering is you’re focused on yourself. …Suffering comes from three thought patterns, loss, less, never.” – Tony Robbins

CK: There are other forms of suffering, certainly. But this can be very powerful for many of life’s worries.

“And I think ultimately, sometimes when we judge other people, it’s just a way to not look at ourselves; a way to feel superior or sanctimonious or whatever. My trauma therapist said everytime you meet someone, just in your head, say ‘I love you’ before you have a conversation with them, and that conversation is going to go a lot better.” -Whitney Cummings

On Action

“What you know doesn’t mean shit. What do you do consistently?” -Tony Robbins

“Perfectionism leads to procrastination, which leads to paralysis.” – Whitney Cummings

“Robustness is when you care more about the few who like your work than the multitude who hate it (artists); fragility is when you care more about the few who hate your work than the multitude who love it (politicians).”

Choose to be robust.

On Purpose

“If [someone] gave you $1 billion, how would you spend it besides the parties and Ferraris and so forth? If I asked you to spend $1 billion on improving the world, solving a problem, what would you pursue?” – Peter Diamandis

TF: Still struggling with a sense of purpose or mission? Roughly half a dozen people in this book have suggested the book Start with Why by Simon Sinek.

Naval Ravikant on Happiness and Perspective

“The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It’s just like building muscles.”

“If you study even the smallest bit of science, you will realize that, for all practical purposes, we are nothing. We’re basically monkeys on a small rock orbiting a small star in a huge galaxy, which is in an absolutely staggeringly gigantic universe, which itself may be part of a gigantic multiverse.

This universe has been around for probably 10 billion years or more and will be around for tens of billion years afterward. So your existence, my existence, is just infinitesimal. It’s like a firefly blinking once in the night. Nothing that we do lasts. Eventually, you will fade, your works will fade, your children will fade, your thoughts will fade, this planet will fade, the sun will fade…it will all be gone.

There are entire civilizations that we remember now with just one or two words like ‘Sumerian’ or ‘Mayan.’ Do you know any Sumerians or Mayana? Do you hold any of them in high regard or esteem? Have they outlived their natural lifespan somehow? No.

If you don’t believe in an afterlife, then you [should realize] that this is such a short and precious life, it is really important that you don’t spend it being unhappy. There is no excuse for spending most of your life in misery. You’ve only got 70 years of the 50 billion or however long the universe is going to be around.” 

CK:  A sobering (and some would likely say depressing) way to remember. But I think Naval makes a strong point here to remind us how precious our lives are.

If you enjoyed or have thoughts about this post please share, and/or comment below! Is Tools of Titans a book you would like to read in its entirety? I highly recommend it and find it easy to revisit and get value from. 

Comment or email me and let me know what books you would like to see in upcoming issues of Cody Reads!