Tim Ferriss People Quotations

For most people, life would be boring without meaningful work.

It's lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for "realistic" goals, paradoxically making them the most time-consuming and energy consuming. It is easier to raise $10,000,000 than it is $1,000,000. It is easier to pick up the one perfect 10 in the bar than the five 8s.

You don't have to travel, but I find extended travel to be a helpful tool for reexamining yourself and the constraints you've artificially placed on your life. It's easy to believe everything has to be done one way if you're always in one place around the same people.

I take notes like some people take drugs...

If you take a strong stance and have a clear opinion or statement on any subject online, you're going to polarize people. And without that polarity, there's no discussion. Discussion is what I want, which means that I'm fine with the consequences.

Most people are good at a handful of things and utterly miserable at most.

People who avoid all criticism fail. It's destructive criticism we need to avoid, not criticism in all forms.

I will take as a given that, for most people, somewhere between six and seven billion of them, the perfect job is the one that takes the least time.

People are fond of using the its not what you know, its who you know adage as an excuse for inaction, as if all successful people are born with powerful friends. Nonsense.

Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitate to get in the way if you're moving.

Be bold and don't worry about what people think. They don't do it that often anyway.

I think time management as a label encourages people to view each 24-hour period as a slot in which they should pack as much as possible.

I encourage active skepticism - when people are being skeptical because they're trying to identify the best course of action. They're trying to identify the next step for themselves or other people.

I'm not averse to making a lot of money. But where does that end? I hang out with people with hundreds of millions of dollars. Is that the standard by which I should measure myself? Where does that take you if you're in my business? I think it takes you to pretty dark, corrupt places.

Everything that works in sales has been done already. Just keep track of the crap that you buy, or the awesome stuff that you buy, and decide what was the trigger, and then just sell to people like you. It's really that easy - and that's what I do.

I discourage passive skepticism, which is the armchair variety where people sit back and criticize without ever subjecting their theories or themselves to real field testing.

People don't want to be millionaires - they want to experience what they believe only millions can buy.

Ninety-nine percent of people believe they can't do great things, so they aim for mediocrity.

The way we measure productivity is flawed. People checking their BlackBerry over dinner is not the measure of productivity.

People are smarter than you think. Give them a chance to prove themselves.

I always point people to the article '1,000 True Fans' by Kevin Kelly. If you choose your thousand ideal customers or readers properly and find the single author blog that targets that audience, you never have to do any more marketing. You're done. That is a lesson that very few product developers and marketers have learned, and it's unfortunate.

As far as income goes, there are three currencies in the world; most people ignore two. The three currencies are time, income and mobility, in descending order of importance. Most people focus exclusively on income.

People will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.

But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn't making you stronger, they're making you weaker.

I do not equate productivity to happiness. For most people, happiness in life is a massive amount of achievement plus a massive amount of appreciation. And you need both of those things.

Poisonous people do not deserve your time. To think otherwise is masochistic.

For all their bitching about what’s holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they’re being held from.

Resveratrol is fascinating stuff. One of the best sources of information about it is the Immortality Institute. They have a forum where some people are in the 500 Club, as they call it. They've been taking 500 milligrams for years. It's a really great source of data.

Uncertainty and the prospect of failure can be very scary noises in the shadows. Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.