Life advice is something people are always willing to share. Since I am a big believer in learning from others, this ends up working out most of the time! Especially when you can get a lot of helpful advice in a short timeframe.
Since there is so much life advice in the book, Tim Ferriss’s book, The Tools of the Titans, is one of my favorites I’ve read in recent years. It has over 700 pages of interviews with people at the top of their respective fields. You get to see their insight on all areas of life. The topics covered range from health, money, how to think about careers, how to manage relationships, investment advice, and countless other areas we share. Below are some of my favorite insights from the book.
Marc Andreessen: Don’t overestimate the people on pedestals
“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 things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
Marc Andeessen
Taking ownership of your life and making it better is partially the whole point of this blog. We all accept that we are in charge of our own lives and that we can build it to be better. Others have made their ideal life, so can we!
Derek Sivers: Don’t be a Donkey
Preface: There are a lot of thirty-year old’s, and even now twenty years old’s who want to do a lot of different things but the world is telling them to pick one thing and this can be intimidating. Derek Siver’s has advice on how to shift our mindset from this problem.
This fable is called Buridan’s ass, it is “about a donkey who is standing halfway between a pile of hay and a bucket of water. He just keeps looking left to the hay and right to the water, trying to decide. Hay or water, hay or water? He’s unable to decide, so he eventually falls over and dies of both hunger and thirst…so my advice to my thirty-year-old self is don’t be a donkey. You can do everything you want to do. you just need foresight and patience.”
Derek Sivers
It can be overwhelming to try to do everything at once, and this can immobilize us. It is better to start something while keeping in mind what else we would like to do. Then we can keep working our way to each area.
Matt Mullenweg: Everyone is interesting
“Everyone is interesting. If you’re ever bored in conservation, the problems with you, not the other person.”
Matt Mullenweg
This happens when we are not engaging in authentic and meaningful conversation. When in doubt, try to find what the person is passionate about and get them talking about that. The world is varied and diverse, and we can learn from everyone. We just have to prime the right conversation.
Tony Robbins: A focus on “me” = suffering
“The reason you’re suffering is you’re focused on yourself …suffering comes from three thought patterns: loss, less, never.”
Tony Robbins
Focusing too much on ourselves can cause a life filled with suffering. There is always something that is lost, lessened, or never happened. One way to get out of this suffering pattern is to focus on what we are grateful for.
Check out the love and kindness mediation to help with this practice.
Peter Theil: Why not start now?
“If you are planning on doing something with your life, if you have a 10-year plan of how to get there, you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months?’
Peter Theil
Of course, this isn’t always possible, but it does help to ask the question. What can we do in the next six months that we were telling ourselves could take ten years? Common examples include starting a business, investing, writing a book, starting coding, or getting in shape. How can we reach these goals faster?
Tracy DiNunzio: On Complaining
“When you complain, nobody wants to help you…If you spend your time focusing on the wrong things, and that’s what you express and project to people you know, you don’t become a source of growth for people, you become a source of destruction for people. That draws more destructiveness”
Tracy DiNunzio
Instead of complaining, focus on solution generation. Look for ways to take what’s wrong and make it right. Focusing on improving the situation will not only improve your attitude; it will make people want to help us along as well.
Noah Kagan: Don’t try and find the time. Schedule Time.
On Tuesdays from 10 AM-12 PM, Noah schedules nothing but “Learning.” This is a great reminder that, for anything important, you don’t find the time.
Tim Ferriss
I often told myself, “I don’t have time” to pursue the things I’d like to pursue, like drawing. My fiance then told me, “we make time for what we prioritize”, and it stuck with me like this above quote. If something is important to us like learning or learning a new skill, it needs its block on the calendar. Make the time instead of trying to find it.
B.J. Novak: Enjoy
He [Novak] didn’t stop to enjoy the incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experience of The Office. B.J. wishes he had told himself back then that it was a very special time in his life, and that he should own it and enjoy it. Instead of being so nervous, for what ended up being no reason at all.
Tim Ferriss
It is easy to get caught up in the moment and worry about what is happening in our lives. We often miss the quiet blessing it brings. This story from B.J. Novak (Ryan from The Office) showed me it’s a normal feeling. We should stop and look at the joy our current situation is bringing and how it can be special.
Maria Popova: When in doubt, scratch your itch
“The second you start doing it for an audience, you’ve lost the long game because creating something rewarding and sustainable over the long run requires, most of all, keeping yourself excited about it”
Mary Popova
For me, a salient example is this blog. It scratches my itch, I want to build an ideal life for myself, while also enjoying the journey of it along the way. I couldn’t find a resource that was helping me effectively, so I made my own. By scratching my itch of learning, condensing, and combining the lessons from experts in every area of life to get the full picture of how to build a balanced life. I then am sharing it with you all, so we all can work on this together.
Will MacAskill: Follow your passion is terrible advice
“The biggest predictor of job satisfaction is mentally engaging work. It’s the nature of the job itself…It’s whether the job provides a lot of variety, gives you good feedback, allows you to exercise autonomy, contributes to the wider world-Is it meaningful?”
Will MacAskill
This goes back to what makes us happy in a career. We need to research and find roles that fill our lives with satisfaction, beyond just ‘following our passion’. It takes work to find a dream job, but it can be very rewarding.
Eric Weinstein: Old habits die hard
“in almost every advertisement for wristwatches, the watches are set to 10:10…you realize that the world has pulled one over on you because 10:10 looks like a smile to watch advertisers…What’s funny is that the wisdom has crept into the point that sometimes you’ll see digital watch ads, and they’ll still be set to 10:10.”
Eric Weinstein
Old habits can manifest in weird ways, and kicking the bad ones for ourselves can be extremely difficult. I found it reassuring that even watch companies have this problem. Which raises the question, what habits are we unconsciously carrying forward, and if needed, how can we improve them?
Andrew Zimmern: Finding the right recipe for the kitchen or life: look for details and doers
“Go on the internet, there are 20 recipes for pound cake. I go with the one that even describes to a quarter of an inch the size of the pan. Because if someone is describing that level of detail, you know they have gone through it.”
Andrew Zimern
When learning from others, look for those who go into the details. A lot of people can say great things and ignore their advice. Look for teachers who ‘walk the walk’ as it is said. Look for the details and lessons that can be gleaned only from those who go through the experiences.
Naval Ravikant: The Three option you always have in life
“in any situation in life, you only have three options. You always have three options. You can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you could change it but not changing it, wishing you would leave it but not leaving it, and not accepting it.”
Naval Ravikant
Choosing action is generally better than inaction. Even the act of leaving it (doing nothing) is an act of itself. We need to decide for ourselves how we want our life situations to be. We can’t always change what happens to us, but we can always choose our responses, if we don’t, we can feel powerless. This leads to suffering. Taking an active role in our lives sets us up to take control of our lives.
Main Take-aways
- Look for learnings from those who have experienced the life you would like. Learn from their experiences and use them to help build your own life.
Action item
Which of these above insights spoke to you the most? How can you incorporate that lesson into your daily life for the next week? Schedule time to practice the lesson each day for the next seven days.
