5 Bullet Archive

Everything Tim Ferriss has recommended in 5-Bullet Friday — 2,095 books, articles, quotes, films, products and more, gathered from 480 issues since 2015. Browse by category, sort by what the community values or how often Tim has returned to it, and spend your 25 votes on what matters most to you. Each item's note is quoted from Tim's own words in the newsletter.

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2025 Past Year Review

Life HacksTim featured this 2× · 2022–2025 · Chris Cordry · tim.blog

2025 Past Year Review. I’m sometimes asked how I approach New Year’s resolutions. The truth is that I no longer approach them at all, even though I did for decades. Why? I have found “past year reviews” (PYR) more valuable and actionable than half-blindly looking forward. Here’s the step-by-step process I follow. For a fun pairing, also read “I’ve Done Tim Ferriss’s Past Year Review for 5 Years. Here Are 22 Lessons I Learned” by Chris Cordry. (Alternate link.)— Tim Ferriss
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Learn to Read Korean in 15 Minutes

Life HacksTim featured this 2× · 2023–2025 · ryanestrada.com

“Learn to Read Korean in 15 Minutes.” For those who might want to sing along to KPop Demon Hunters and actually read the Korean, it’s surprisingly easy. In fact, learning to read all Korean (Hangul or 한글) takes only an hour or so! “15 minutes” might be a slight exaggeration, but it’s pretty close. You’ll be reading Korean without having any idea of what you’re saying, but, hey… that’s good enough to slay at karaoke or sing-along Golden. Baby steps! It’s a beautiful language.— Tim Ferriss
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The Kevin Rose Loading Prank.” I’ll give credit to my good friend KRose

Life HacksTim featured this 2× · 2018–2019 · twitter.com

“The Kevin Rose Loading Prank.” I’ll give credit to my good friend KRose for this one, even though he’s not expecting it. He and I were texting last week via iPhone, and I had poor reception. I was trying to send him a picture, and I kept asking, “Did you get it yet?” to which he kept responding, “Not yet. It’s still loading….” After a few rounds of this, we had the following exchange: Kevin: “There is a non-zero chance you’re fucking with me and sending me a picture of a downloading symbol.” Tim: “Haha... I’m not! That’s a genius idea, though.” And so, here we are in 5-Bullet Friday, and I of— Tim Ferriss
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Ian Fleming’s typical day at his estate in Jamaica

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2026 · x.com

“Ian Fleming’s typical day at his estate in Jamaica.” I reposted with “Please tell me this is real.” Thanks to Michael for sleuthing out the answer. Pair it with “How To Write A Book By Ian Fleming.” Ian Fleming is best known for creating James Bond in a series of spy novels beginning with Casino Royale (1953), which also happens to be one of my favorite Bond movies.— Tim Ferriss
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▶How to “Dry Age” a Steak in Two Hours

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2025 · youtube.com

How to “Dry Age” a Steak in Two Hours. “Dry-aged steak is famously tender and flavorful, but often too expensive for home cooks to attempt. In this episode of Techniquely, Lan Lam explains how dry-aging works and shows us how to achieve the flavor of dry-aging at home in as little as 2 hours with the use of shio koji, a fermented Japanese paste.” Chef David Chang of Momofuku fame also swears by koji. Shio koji (塩麹) is a traditional Japanese seasoning made by fermenting a mixture of koji (rice inoculated with Aspergillus oryzae), salt, and water. It’s prized for its ability to tenderize meat, e— Tim Ferriss
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Resetting your cellular data stats on an iPhone

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2025 · support.apple.com

Resetting your cellular data stats on an iPhone. I was consuming mobile data at an unusually high rate (e.g., “You have 10% remaining for the next 10 days”), and I followed these steps to figure out what the hell was gobbling it up. Step one is resetting your cellular data stats to zero, which most of us did years ago, if ever: “To reset these statistics, go to Settings > Cellular, scroll to the bottom, then tap Reset Statistics.” Within a few hours, I knew who the offenders were and could minimize overages.— Tim Ferriss
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▶The best way to stop headphone tangles

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2025 · youtube.com

“The best way to stop headphone tangles.” I’ve gone back to cabled headphones for most things. After losing at least $750 worth of AirPods and having lots of dropped calls and battery-life issues, I’m going retro. The biggest hassle is always the rat’s nest of tangles, and this video provides a short and sweet solution.— Tim Ferriss
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Texting Android friends from iMessage

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2025 · support.apple.com

Texting Android friends from iMessage! I prefer using my laptop for texting during work hours, as it’s much faster. Sadly, it’s impossible to iMessage my friends and family who are on Android… or so I thought. For years, my workaround has been using the WhatsApp desktop app, but my friend Mike taught me an easier way. In simplest terms, here’s what you do: 1. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Apps > Messages. 2. Tap Text Message Forwarding. (If you don’t see it, turn iMessage off and back on, then tap Send & Receive and sign in again.) 3. Tap to turn on each device that you want to allow to sen— Tim Ferriss
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How do you feel when you wake up and when you get into bed at night, and how easily do you fall asleep?” The time in bed in the morning and at night tells you all you need to know.

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2024 · tim.blog

“How do you feel when you wake up and when you get into bed at night, and how easily do you fall asleep?” The time in bed in the morning and at night tells you all you need to know. It’s not purely intellectual reasoning. It’s not a pro-and-con list. It’s not a spreadsheet. It’s not a Venn diagram. How do you feel? Are you even aware of how you’re feeling? How much energy have you spent blocking out certain feelings because you don’t want to feel certain things? To borrow from Tara Brach: “There was a wise old sage who said, ‘There’s really only one question worth considering, and that is: Wha— Tim Ferriss
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Track a flight in real time on iMessage, on iPhone or Mac

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2024 · macrumors.com

Track a flight in real time on iMessage, on iPhone or Mac. If you are looking to quickly get info on your flight or that of a loved one, all it takes is a text. No Googling required. Just text yourself (or someone else) the flight number with no spaces (e.g., UA8181), and you can easily track it inside iMessage. Tap on the auto-generated link (right-click on laptop), and time, gate, and more will automagically appear in a preview pop-up. See this screenshot for the exact steps. Hat tip to Loni!— Tim Ferriss
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Forget Siri. Turn your iPhone’s ‘Action Button’ into a ChatGPT voice assistant instead

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2024 · techcrunch.com

“Forget Siri. Turn your iPhone’s ‘Action Button’ into a ChatGPT voice assistant instead.” Hat tip to Kevin Rose, who first showed me this shortcut. I now use it daily myself. Note that only the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max have an “action” button. Do you have a favorite way of using Shortcuts or the action button? Please let me know on Twitter (@tferriss) with #shortcuts!— Tim Ferriss
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▶Legendary 86-Year-Old Physical Therapist Dr. Shirley Sahrmann Demonstrates Her Morning Exercises

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2023 · youtube.com

Legendary 86-Year-Old Physical Therapist Dr. Shirley Sahrmann Demonstrates Her Morning Exercises. Many of you asked for a video demonstration of Dr. Shirley Sahrmann’s morning exercises that she mentioned in our podcast. Her new demonstration video is a great addition to the longer episode, in which we discussed low-back pain, movement as medicine, and much, much more.— Tim Ferriss
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Enhancing low back health through stabilization exercise

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2023 · Stuart M · ahs.uwaterloo.ca

“Enhancing low back health through stabilization exercise” (alternative link) by Stuart M. McGill, C.M., professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo. Professor McGill is also the author of Low Back Disorders: Evidence-Based Prevention and Rehabilitation, which I plan on reading. Example videos of the exercises mentioned in the document: Cat-Camel, Curl-Up, Side Bridge (Beginners), Side Bridge (Advanced), and Bird Dog.— Tim Ferriss
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Sort by unread messages in iMessage

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2023 · support.apple.com

Sort by unread messages in iMessage. This has reduced my device anxiety tremendously. I get a lot of texts but will often lose unread messages several scrolls down and forget about them, disappointing a friend or losing a fun opportunity in the process. Last week, I was hanging out with a bunch of tech-savvy friends, and I noticed that one of them had an “Unread Messages” folder in iMessage. WTF?! I’d been begging Apple for this feature for years but had never seen it. He suggested it was because I hadn’t updated my iOS, but all of us were up-to-date, and he was the only one with this amazing — Tim Ferriss
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How to take JPEG pictures on your iPhone instead of HEIC

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2022 · imore.com

“How to take JPEG pictures on your iPhone instead of HEIC” Here are the instructions: Settings → Camera → Formats → Select “Most Compatible.” To switch back to HEIC, simply switch from “Most Compatible” to “High Efficiency.”— Tim Ferriss
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Share or link to quotes and text in Chrome

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2021 · support.google.com

Share or link to quotes and text in Chrome. This is a very cool trick in the latest version of Chrome: “You can create a shareable link that goes directly to specific highlighted text on a page.” Find simple instructions here.— Tim Ferriss
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Use Live Text and Visual Look Up on your iPhone

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2021 · support.apple.com

Use Live Text and Visual Look Up on your iPhone. This is pretty amazing, and here’s a short video showing what it looks like. I’ll focus on one use case: I frequently take pictures of key pages in books. I do this with both physical books (often books received as gifts) and Kindle books that I’ve already highlighted (to capture the highlights of my highlights). Here’s a real-world example of the latter. Using this new feature, I can simply copy and paste directly from photos on my iPhone into Evernote, Google Docs, or elsewhere! This saves quite a few steps. Here is the official description: “— Tim Ferriss
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I’m considering getting solar panels for my home.

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2021

“I’m considering getting solar panels for my home. Plenty of year-round sun. What are common rookie mistakes, important questions to ask, and any other tips? Thanks!” The comment thread here quickly turned into an incredible discussion, and it’s chock-full of resources.— Tim Ferriss
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Control the location granularity that you share with apps

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2021 · support.apple.com

Control the location granularity that you share with apps. “To allow an app to use your specific location, leave Precise Location turned on. To share only your approximate location—which may be sufficient for an app that doesn’t need your exact location—turn Precise Location off.” Here are the instructions. On my iPhone in the US, here’s what it looks like: Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > [Select App] > While Using App > Turn Off “Precise Location.”— Tim Ferriss
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For 500 days I’ve written 500 words of Morning Pages.

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2021 · twitter.com

“For 500 days I’ve written 500 words of Morning Pages. While they’re usually just brain dumps, I’ll sometimes reflect on specific questions. As @tferriss says, if you want better answers, ask better questions. -My Top 10 Reflection Questions (and where I got them)- [THREAD]” from Dickie Bush (@dickiebush).— Tim Ferriss
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2020 Past Year Review

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2020 · tim.blog

2020 Past Year Review. I’m sometimes asked how I approach New Year’s resolutions. The truth is that I no longer approach them at all, even though I did for decades. Why? I have found “past year reviews” (PYR) more informed, valuable, and actionable than half-blindly looking forward. Here’s the step-by-step process I follow.— Tim Ferriss
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Sometimes, you’d like to see the results of an active poll on Twitter or other platforms, but you don’t want to vote for any number of reasons (e.g., skewing the results).

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2020 · twitter.com

Sometimes, you’d like to see the results of an active poll on Twitter or other platforms, but you don’t want to vote for any number of reasons (e.g., skewing the results). Rory Parle (@roryparle) offers this tip: “Turn on airplane mode and vote. It won’t register the vote but will flash up the results briefly.” The current workaround for poll creators is to add a “Show results” voting option, but this is clunky and crowds out other voting options. Perhaps Twitter team members who get this newsletter can see about offering this option natively? Could be important for election season...— Tim Ferriss
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After experiencing a super-frustrating low-volume issue

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2020 · twitter.com

After experiencing a super-frustrating low-volume issue on my new MacBook, reader HP (@harr15on_) and others kindly suggested this NVRAM/PRAM reset fix, which did the trick. Many thanks!— Tim Ferriss
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Coach Christopher Sommer

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2020 · tim.blog

Coach Christopher Sommer has given me many tools, and here are a few exercises that give a lot of bang for the buck. Pics are from Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers. Try the “pike pulses” for a good laugh.— Tim Ferriss
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This is incredible. Time to take another vacation from my excuses…

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2019 · el2.convertkit-mail4.com

“This is incredible. Time to take another vacation from my excuses…” I found this to be the perfect inspiration for a more positive and optimistic 2020. It’s also a cue to revisit the old 21-day no-complaint experiment.— Tim Ferriss
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Five.sentenc.es

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2019 · el2.convertkit-mail.com

Five.sentenc.es. “Five.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be five sentences or less. It’s that simple.” Here is an example text to place in your signature: “Q: Why is this email five sentences or less? A: I discovered this ages ago in a guest post from Leo Babauta. As he wrote, “I limit myself to five sentences for each reply (at the maximum — many replies are even shorter). That forces me to be concise, to choose only the essentials of what I want to say, and limits the time I spend replying to email. Keep them short, but powerful.— Tim Ferriss
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For the last five years or so, I've carried two reminder cards in my wallet: “Notice the best part” and “That which hinders your task...

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2019

For the last five years or so, I've carried two reminder cards in my wallet: “Notice the best part” and “That which hinders your task... is your task.” What reminders or other important items do you carry with you or put where you’ll see them often? Let me know on Twitter (@tferriss) and use hashtag #5BulletFriday so I can find them.— Tim Ferriss
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iPhone home screen shortcut (!) for switching between grayscale and color.

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2018 · tristanharris.com

iPhone home screen shortcut (!) for switching between grayscale and color. I’ve previously recommended switching your iPhone to grayscale as a means of reducing social media use, based on Tristan Harris’s recommendation via comedian Whitney Cummings. It really works. Alas, the process involves many steps and is a pain in the ass. Fortunately, “The Crazy Bulgarian” (his requested name), introduced me to a great shortcut via Lifehacker, “To easily toggle between color and grayscale, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut > Color Filters. Now, you just press the home bu— Tim Ferriss
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Ideal Lifestyle Costing page and sample dreamlining spreadsheets on tim.blog

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2018 · tim.blog

Ideal Lifestyle Costing page and sample dreamlining spreadsheets on tim.blog — This is a page and spreadsheet related to The 4-Hour Workweek and calculating the true cost of your ideal lifestyle. The numbers then determine your Target Monthly Income (TMI) or Target Daily Income (TDI), and results can be surprisingly achievable. The download link broke when I changed my domain name to tim.blog. Sorry it took so long to fix!— Tim Ferriss
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I just learned about the following YouTube keyboard shortcuts: press J to rewind 10 seconds, press K to pause, press L to fast forward 10 seconds.

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2018

I just learned about the following YouTube keyboard shortcuts: press J to rewind 10 seconds, press K to pause, press L to fast forward 10 seconds. All three keys are alongside one another, so it’s easy to do without looking. This might not seem like much, but it’s incredibly helpful when moving around in longer videos (or audio on YT) or trying to repeat what you just saw/heard, as clicking on the progress bar itself can lead to jumping around in 4-5-minute increments.— Tim Ferriss
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Grayscaling my phone

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2017 · lifehacker.com

Grayscaling my phone. This was recommended to me by comedian Whitney Cummings, and it has been studied for dramatically reducing smart phone and social media use. Here are instructions from Lifehacker: "The process for enabling grayscale differs for different models of Android phones, but it’s typically accessed via the “Accessibility” menu. In iOS 10, go to Settings > General > Accessibility >Display Accommodations >Color Filters. Switch Color Filters on and select Grayscale. To easily toggle between color and grayscale, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut > Colo— Tim Ferriss
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whether considering a business decision, personal relationship, or otherwise — I asked myself the one question that helps answer many others .

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2017 · Viktor E · tim.blog

whether considering a business decision, personal relationship, or otherwise — I asked myself the one question that helps answer many others . . . What would this look like if it were easy? “This” could be anything. That morning, it was answering a laundry list of big questions. What would this look like if it were easy? is such a lovely and deceptively leveraged question. It’s easy to convince yourself that things need to be hard, that if you’re not redlining, you’re not trying hard enough. This leads us to look for paths of most resistance, creating unnecessary hardship in the process. But w— Tim Ferriss
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Broiling burgers in tin foil

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2017 · seriouseats.com

Broiling burgers in tin foil to save on clean up and ensure multiple burgers are done at the same time (Thanks to @thefoodlab). I've been doing this with ground caribou with mixed-in pork fat (no bun for me unless cheat day), and the results have been stellar. Add black and bleu rub to the initial mix for fail-safe flavor, if that's your style.— Tim Ferriss
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Showtime shows...via Amazon?!

Life HacksTim featured this 1× · 2016

Showtime shows...via Amazon?! Only this week did someone clue me in: it’s possible to get Showtime On Demand via Amazon Prime, which I can then immediately watch (e.g., Billions) on my Samsung TV. Oddly, none of my techie friends I asked were aware of this, as we’d assumed Showtime and Amazon viewed each other’s programming as competitive. Here is the link I found (non-affiliate), and you can also search “Showtime” under “TV” on Amazon.— Tim Ferriss