Everything Tim Ferriss has recommended in 5-Bullet Friday — 2,154 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.
“The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves, but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say…. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing...the thing that might be worth saying.” —
“The purpose of life, as far as I can tell, is to find a mode of being that’s so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant.” — (@jordanbpeterson)
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.” ―
“To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.” ― , Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
“Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.” —
“To the economically illiterate, if some company makes a million dollars in profit, this means that their products cost a million dollars more than they would have cost without profits. It never occurs to such people that these products might cost several million dollars more to produce than if they were produced by enterprises operating without the incentives to be efficient created by the prospect of profits.” —
“Anytime you're practicing renunciation, you're deluded. How about that! You're deluded. What are you renouncing? Anytime you renounce something, you are tied forever to the thing you renounce. There's a guru in India who says, ‘Every time a prostitute comes to me, she's talking about nothing but God. She says I'm sick of this life that I'm living. I want God. But every time a priest comes to me, he's talking about nothing but sex.’ Very well, when you renounce something, you're stuck to it forever. When you fight something, you're tied to it forever. As long as you're fighting it, you are giv
“The best fighter is never angry.” ―
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” —
“If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters." —
“It is amateurs who have one big bright beautiful idea that they can never abandon. Professionals know that they have to produce theory after theory before they are likely to hit the jackpot.” ―
“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.” ―
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” —
“I will have to remember ‘I am here today to cross the swamp, not to fight all the alligators.’” — of Possibility by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” —
“What do you despise? By this are you truly known.” ― , Dune )
“It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover.” ― , French mathematician, theoretical physicist, and engineer
“To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.” —
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” ― , Notes of a Native Son
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” ―
“If we can forgive what's been done to us... If we can forgive what we've done to others... If we can leave our stories behind. Our being victims and villains. Only then can we maybe rescue the world.” —
“50% of the Internet = people doing nothing saying...”
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” — , Litany Against Fear (from the novel Dune)
“Our bodies are apt to be our autobiographies.” —
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.” —
“You remain awake at night and perform your devotions. Also awake at night are dogs, better than you. They bark and in no way can they be stopped. They go and sleep on the dung heap, better than you. They do not leave their master's door, even if they get beaten with slippers, better than you. Bulleh Shah, buy yourself something for the journey, or else the game will be won by the dogs, better than you.” ― (also introduced to me by Jawad Mian)
“Gratitude is the wine of the soul. Go on. Get drunk!” —
"Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness." —
"My Wage" by . I found this in The ONE Thing, written by Gary Keller (@garykeller) and Jay Papasan (@jaypapasan). Gary is the founder and chairman of the board of Keller Williams Realty, the world's largest real estate franchise by agent count, and he carries this poem with him. I picked up The ONE Thing for the second time after Allen Walton and a few other 4-Hour Workweek case studies recently mentioned the book’s impact on their early growth.
“Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.” —
“Those who do not weep, do not see.” —
“A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.” ―
“No person would give up even an inch of their estate, and the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay; yet we easily let others encroach on our lives—worse, we often pave the way for those who will take it over. No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We’re tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.” — in The Daily Stoic, which is now only $1.99 in ebook until 1/6. I liked this book so much that I publ
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." — (Theodor Seuss Geisel)(alternatively attributed to Sir Mark Young and/or Bernard Baruch) P.S. Last year, around this time, many of you found the text below helpful. I am including it again, as this what I do every year. Have a wonderful NYE! I’m often asked about 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 the change? I have found “past year reviews” (PYR) more informed, valuable, and actionabl
“Of all sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.” —
“For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.” —
“It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking, than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting.” —
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” ― Epicurus For my friends spread across the U.S., I wish you and yours a most joyous Thanksgiving holiday! And to all of my friends out there, spread across the globe, please accept my sincerest gratitude. If it weren’t for y’all, I wouldn’t be here, have this weird “career,” or be nearly as excited for 2019 as I am. There is much adventure coming! With heartfelt thanks, I am sending much love to you and yours… 🙏
“To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.” ―
“Happiness does not lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness.” — (found in A.J. Jacobs’ book, Thanks a Thousand!)
“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” ―
"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness." — (1858-1947), Nobel Prize-winning German physicist and the father of quantum theory.
“A Thousand Kisses Deep” by . This one is worth reading a few times… and then a few times more.
“The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I'm looking for the truth,’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.” —
“My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle. What do I care about knowledge. All I want is to answer to my blood, direct, without fribbling intervention of mind, or moral, or what not.” —
“All of our miseries are nothing but attachment.” —
“Between two evils, I generally like to pick the one I never tried before.” —
“My father warned me about men and booze, but he never mentioned a word about women and cocaine.” —
“Gardening is not outcome-oriented. A successful harvest is not the end of a gardener's existence, but only a phase of it. As any gardener knows, the vitality of a garden does not end with a harvest. It simply takes another form. Gardens do not ‘die’ in the winter but quietly prepare for another season.” ― , Finite and Infinite Games
“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” —
“Be pleasant until ten o’clock in the morning, and the rest of the day will take care of itself.” —
“I never can feel certain of any truth but from a clear perception of its beauty.” —
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” —
“The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.” —
“I should be suspicious of what I want.” —
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” —
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” —
Via Negativa – Improving by removing — “Via negativa can also be used to describe a similarly ‘negative’ way of improving one’s life; instead of concentrating on what you do, the focus turns to what you don’t do. This path has two main thrusts: stripping bad habits and situations out of your life, and avoiding bad habits/situations in the first place.” (Source: Art of Manliness.) Related: “The Not-To-Do List: 9 Habits to Stop Now.”
“What was once called the objective world is a sort of Rorschach inkblot, into which each culture, each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot itself.” —
“Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.” —